LIBRARY 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 


Class 


University  of  California  •  Berkeley 


WALT  WHITMAN 


(THE   CAMDEN   SAGE) 


AS 


RELIGIOUS  AND  MORAL  TEACHER 


STUDY 


BY 

WILLIAM    NORMAN    GUTHR1E 


CINCINNATI 

THE   ROBERT   CLARKE   COMPANY 
1897 


Only  one  hundred  copies  of  this  brochure  on  laid 
paper  have  been  printed. 

This  copy  is  No. I...Q _ 


Copyrighted,  1897, 
By  the  Robert  Clarke  Company. 


A  WORD  TO  THE  READER. 


This  essay,  the  last  in  the  recently  published  volume,  "  Modern 
Poet  Prophets,"  appears  by  itself  alone  for  such  as  desire  to  see 
nothing  between  cover  and  cover  but  an  honest  attempt  to  re- 
move obstacles  of  prejudice  from  the  path  of  him  who  would 
seriously  approach  our  Titan. 

Few  like  to  admit  that  they  have  been  converted.  It  is  a 
dangerous  admission.  It  implies  the  possibility  of  further  con- 
version. We  forget  that  firmness,  obstinate  tenacity,  virtues  in 
conduct  are  vices  in  thought.  To  be  ever  ready  to  change  when 
superior  reasons  are  against  us,  is  just  that  unchangeable  loyalty 
to  truth  we  commend.  We  must  abandon  the  lower  round  of 
the  ladder  for  the  higher,  be  constantly  inconstant,  if  we  would 
mount. 

It  may  seeni  a  questionable  expedient  to  print  in  the  Appendix 
extracts  from  an  insolent  critique.  Still,  the  extracts  when  hos- 
tile, are  so  ferocious  as  to  condemn  themselves.  They  will,  how- 
ever serve  to  prove  that  the  writer  of  this  essay  went  through  the 
usual  phases  of  amazement,  horror,  indignation,  fury,  exaspera- 
tion, disapproval,  qualified  dislike,  qualified  liking,  till  at  length 
he  is  forced  by  common  honesty  to  confess  himself  an  ardent 
lover  of  much  that  our  great  American  champion  of  Democracy, 
political  and  spiritual,  has  written. 

For  my  own  part,  I  am  not  coward  enough  to  be  afraid  to  own 
my  whole-hearted  loyalty  to  the  teacher,  even  though  I  may 
differ  from  him  on  many  points  deemed  cardinal  by  most  men. 
He  himself  desires  us  to  be  independent  of  him.  He  bids  us  not 
"  look  through  his  eyes,"  but  our  own.  The  Whitmanite  does 

(iii) 


IV  A   WORD   TO   THE   READER. 

not  worship  Whitman,  but  joins  Whitman  in  the  worship  of 
independent  manhood,  striving  to  be  himself  the  man. 

Many  make  extravagant  claims  for  Whitman.  Others  still 
think  it  worth  their  while  to  vent  their  wrath  in  vehement 
epithets,  or  express  a  refined  scorn  by  a  slight  lift  of  the  tip  of 
the  aquiline  nose  when  his  name  is  mentioned.  For  my  part  I 
am  content  to  be  in  such  good  company  as  I  find  myself,  when 
among  admirers  and  reverers  of  Whitman.  Not  English  literary 
men  alone — Tennyson,  A.  C.  Swinburne,  the  Rossettis,E.  Dowden, 
J.  A.  Symonds,  Mrs.  Gilchrist,  Miss  Blind,  and  a  host  of  others  de- 
servedly famous— but  Americans  of  various  types,  like  the  Sted- 
mans,  father  and  son,  John  Burroughs,  Whitelaw  Reid,  Charles  A. 
Dana,  John  Swinton,  George  W.  Childs,  and  many,  many  more,  who 
knew  the  man  as  well  as  his  work,  and  often  loved  the  work  for 
the  sake  of  the  man  whom  they  have  somehow  succeeded  in  im- 
posing on  us  as  the  "  Good  Gray  Poet,"  and  the  "  Camden  Sage," 
titles  which  will  do  more  for  his  fame,  surely  than  the  laureate- 
ship  did  for  Wordsworth,  or  the  barony  for  Tennyson — nay,  more 
than  all  laudatory  critiques  and  biographies.  What 's  in  a  name  ? 
An  influence,  second  only  to  a  living  character.  Even  his  haters 
and  assailers  bow  before  the  venerable,  picturesque  champion  of 
the  doctrine  of  the  "God"  in  any  and  every  man,  the  prophet 
of  a  great  America  about  to  be  discovered,  when  the  chaos  of 
these  states  has  become  cosmos  by  the  creation  of  a  new  type  of 
athletic,  yet  spiritual,  manhood. 


CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

THE  RELIGIOUS  TEACHER, 9 

WHAT  is  RELIGION? 14 

DIVINE  PRIDE,           25 

WORSHIP,           35 

THE  PROBLEM  OF  EVIL, 43 

SALVATION  AND  THE  SAVIOR, 56 

IMMORTALITY, 62 

PERSONAL  IDENTITY, 70 

PERPETUITY  OF  CHARACTER, 76 

TRAVELING  SOULS  AND  THEIR  END, 80 

WHITMAN'S  METHODS  AND  STYLE, 84 

"So  LONG," 93 

APPENDIX, 99 

(v) 


WALT  WHITMAN 

(THE  CAMDEN  SAGE) 

AS  RELIGIOUS  AND  MORAL  TEACHER. 


r 


THE   RELIGIOUS   TEACHER. 

A  man  of  genius  has  his  phases  of  inner  growth,  .  .  . 
and  to  look  for  a  narrow,  definite,  consistent  body  of  doctrine  in 
his  writings  is  to  look  for  something  that  is  not  there,  that  was 
never  intended  to  be  there,  and  that  could  not,  in  the  very  nature 
of  things,  have  been  there.* 

Doubtless  something  of  this  sort  was  in   Walt 
Whitman's  mind  when  he  wrote : 

I  charge  you  forever  reject  those  who  would  expound  me,  for  I 

can  not  expound  myself. 

1  charge  that  there  be  no  theory  or  school  founded  out  of  me. 
I  charge  you  to  leave  all  free,  as  I  have  left  all  free. 

—(Myself  and  Mine,  p.  190.)  t 

He  had  grown.    Like  Emerson, he  cared  nothing 
for  mere  mechanical  consistency. 

Do  I  contradict  myself  ? 

Very  well,  then,  I  contradict  myself,    (p.  78.) 


*  "  Walt  Whitman,"  by  Win.  Clarke,  p.  105.  (Macmillan  & 
Co.,  1892.) 

t  All  references  are  to  the  complete  edition  of  Whitman's 
works,  in  two  volumes.  David  McKay,  Philadelphia.  The  sim- 
ple figures  refer  to  pages  in  "Leaves  of  Grass;"  those  prefixed 
Pr.,  to  the  companion  volume  of  Complete  Prose  Works. 

(9) 


10  WALT   WHITMAN. 

Besides,  the  individual  need  not  consciously 
trouble  himself  about  being  consistent.  Life  will  see 
to  it  that  he  be  not.  Life  is  change.  Remaining  the 
same  is  but  wearing  a  mask,  or  it  is  death.  There  is, 
however,  a  beautiful  continuity  in  every  energetic  ca- 
reer. You  find  nothing  in  it  which,  when  you  know 
the  whole,  you  think  might  not  have  been  predicted 
at  the  outset.  Yet  it  was  not,  because,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  it  could  not  be  foreseen. 

No  man  has  given  us  more  self-criticism,  proba- 
bly, of  a  frank,  helpful  sort,  than  Whitman.  His 
large  volume  of  prose  is  practically  a  commentary  on 
his  poetic  work.  He  shows  that,  in  a  sense,  he  cer- 
tainly could  expound  himself.  His  was  no  incoherent 
message.  He  received  it  gradually,  and  gave  it  as  he  re- 
ceived it ;  but  nevertheless  it  constitutes  a  vital  whole. 

Avowals  of  irreconcilable  tenets — alternate  affirmations  and 
denials,  that  seem  the  utterances  of  some  concord  transcendental- 
ist,  who  should  have  lost  his  wits,  and  never  gone  in  search  of 
them  to  any  purpose.* 

Had  I  not  committed  these  words  to  that  terrible 
Satan,  the  printed  page,  I  should  not  believe  that  I 
understood  Whitman  so  ill  eight  years  ago. 

We  have  a  right  to  demand  that  there  shall  be  in  the  sev- 
eral tenets  upheld  symptoms  at  least  of  a  possible  reconciliation. 

After  diligently  reading  "Leaves  of  Grass,"  and 
constructing  an  index  for  ready  reference  to  its  con- 
tents, I  still  felt  obliged  to  save  the  author's  sanity 
by  supposing  he  often  did  not  mean  what  he  said ! 
So  difficult  is  Whitman  to  some  of  us  when  we  ap- 
proach him  for  the  first  time  ! 

*  "  The  Apostle  of  Chaotism."    See  Appendix. 


THE   RELIGIOUS   TEACHER.  11 

I,  too,     .     .    .    inaugurate  a  religion, 

Each  is  not  for  its  own  sake. 

I  say  the  whole  earth  and  all  the  stars  in  the  sky  are  for  relig- 
ion's sake. 

I  say  no  man  has  ever  yet  been  half  devout  enough. 

Know  you,  solely  to  drop  in  the  earth  the  germs  of  a  greater  re- 
ligion, 

The  following  chants,  each  for  its  kind,  I  sing.    (p.  23.) 

If  Walt  Whitman,  then,  has  rightly  conceived 
of  his  own  mission,  it  is  by  a  consideration  of  him  as 
a  religious  teacher  that  we  shall  do  well  to  approach 
his  work. 

r 

I  I  have  arrived 

I  To  be  wrestled  with  as  I  pass  for  the  solid  prizes  of  the  universe, 

V  For  such  I  afford  whoever  can  persevere  to  win  them.     (p.  27.) 

Whoever  accepts  me,  he  or  she  shall  be  blessed  and  shall  bless 
me.  (p.  123.) 

Listen !    I  will  be  honest  with  you. 

I  do  not  offer  the  old,  smooth  prizes,  but  offer  rough,  new  prizes. 

-(p.  126.) 

I  myself  am  not  one  who  bestows  nothing  upon  man  and  woman, 
For  I  bestow  upon  any  man  or  woman  the  entrance  to  all  the 
gifts  of  the  universe,    (p.  216.) 

Language  so  definite  as  this,  so  tremendous  in 
import,  passes  beyond  all  hyperbolic  license,  unless, 
indeed,  he  has  a  "  new  religion,"  a  "  greater  one,"  to 
impart.  We  have  a  right  to  ask  him  for  a  redemp- 
tion of  promises  so  amazing,  which  should  he  fail  to 
do,  one  could  hardly  help  but  class  him  among  mega- 
lomaniacs—with Professor  Lornbroso.* 

Who  has  read  "  Specimen  Days,"  and  not  felt  the 

*  "  The  Man  of  Genius,"  by  Cesare  Lombroso.  Charles  Scrib- 
ner's  Sons,  New  York,  1895.  For  the  construction  of  the  above 
sentence,  I  have  no  apology  to  offer.  Ambiguity  is  often  a  merit. 
Cf.  p.  45  of  Lombroso's  book. 


12  WALT   WHITMAN. 

loveableness  of  the  man?  What  beautiful  strength 
and  tenderness !  His  magnetism  is  irresistible.  Then, 
too,  the  witness  of  his  friends !  What  friends !  Who 
was  so  worshiped  by  those  who  knew  him  ?  What 
self-oblivious  tenderness  and  great-hearted  enthusiasm 
did  he  not  elicit?  The  "good  gray  poet"  indeed!  It 
is  quite  in  vain  he  attempts  to  repel  one.  He  tries  to 
shock  us : 

Walt.  Whitman,  a  Kosmos,  of  Manhattan  the  son, 
Turbulent,  fleshy,  sensual,  eating,  drinking,  and  breeding. 

—(p.  48.) 
He  insinuates  doubts : 

Do  you  suppose  you  will  find  in  me  your  ideal  ? 

Do  you  suppose  yourself  advancing  on  real  ground  toward  a 
real  heroic  man  ? 

Have  you  no  thought,  O  dreamer,  that  it  may  be  all  may  a,  illu- 
sion? (p.  103.) 

It  is  useless  for  him  to  speak  of 
The  silent  manner  of  me  without  charm,    (p.  105.) 

His  defiant,  rude  treatment  of  us  does  not  dis- 
courage us.  We  still — shocked  though  we  may  think 
ourselves,  and  angry  with  him — hear  something  in  us 
that  says,  as  Emerson  is  reported  to  have  exclaimed : 
"  What  a  man !"  And  we  want  to  know  him  better, 
to  understand  and  test  his  gospel.  If  it  could  give  us 
the  secret  of  his  great  faith  in  humanity,  for  instance, 
we  should  be  well  rewarded  for  much  endurance  of  his 
bearish  buffeting. 

But  we  ask  ourselves,  what  does  Walt  Whitman 
mean  by  religion  ?  Does  he  not  bid  us  "  be  not  cu- 
rious about  God  ?"  (p.  76.)  And  what  can  he  mean 
by  driving  all  the  gods  from  all  the  heavens  like  cattle 
to  the  crack  of  his  whip — his  "  barbaric  yawp  "  sound- 
ing "over  the  roofs  of  the  world"  (p.  78),  into  the 


THE    RELIGIOUS   TEACHER.  13 

shambles  of  his  "  egotism,"  for  his  "  omnivorous 
lines"  (p.  69)  to  devour?  The  ordinary  reader  is 
horrified  at  this  greedy  ogre,  who  eats  gods  instead  of 
children !  (Cf.  p.  67.)  It  is  amazing,  too, — rather  a 
shock  to  one's  old-fashioned  notions, — to  have  a  wedge 
literally  driven  with  sledge-hammer  blows  into  the  com- 
pact Trinity  to  make  room  for  Satan  !  Is  it  a  whim- 
sical prejudice  against  the  venerable  triangle  which 
makes  him  attempt  to  forge  on  his  anvil  a  "  square 
deific?"  (p.  339.)  One  wonders,  somewhat  irrever- 
ently, how  Satan  feels  between  God  the  Son  and  God 
the  Holy  Ghost ;  whether  he  thanks  the  Camden  sage 
for  such  unforseen  promotion  to  uncomfortable  glory 
from  his  old  "  bad  eminence  "  in  Milton's  epic.  But, 
upon  reflection,  all  such  questions  turn  out  to  be  irrel- 
evant. To  Whitman,  all  these  divine  names  represent 
no  persons.  For  him,  they  are 

Eidolons,  eidolons,  eidolons,     (p.  13.) 
Rough  deific  sketches  to  fill  out  better  in  myself,    (p.  67.) 

They  are 
Outlines  I  plead  for  my  brothers  and  sisters,    (p.  78.) 

Iii  plain  terms,  they  are  ideals  mankind  has  pro- 
posed to  itself  for  attainment.  They  have  been  em- 
bodied in  myth,  anchored  in  historic  personages,  pre- 
cipitated by  theologians  as  dogma  in  the  test  tube  of 
unimaginative  reason.  It  is  for  us  to  realize  what, 
taken  together,  they  mean,  namely,  a  divine  revelation 
of  our  possibilities,  which  they  were  fashioned  ex- 
pressly to  hand  down  from  age  to  age,  until  men 
could  once  more  have  access  for  themselves  to  the 
kingdom  of  God  within  them. 


14  WALT   WHITMAN. 


WHAT   IS   RELIGION? 

We  must  not  be  daunted  by  paradox.  Let  us 
turn  to  Whitman's  prose  to  glean  a  definition  of  re- 
ligion, after  we  have  first  weighed  the  significant  fact 
that  he  was  of  Quaker  descent,  and  that  he  thought  it 
worth  while  to  write  of  Elias  Hicks  and  George  Fox 
as  follows : 

Doubtless  the  greatest  scientists  and  theologians  will  some- 
times find  themselves  saying:  "It  is  not  only  those  who  know 
most  who  contribute  most  to  God's  glory."  Doubtless  these  very 
scientists  at  times  stand  with  bared  heads  before  the  humblest 
lives  and  personalities.  For  there  is  something  greater  (is  there 
not?)  than  all  the  science  and  poems  of  the  world — above  all 
else,  like  the  stars  shining  eternal— above  Shakespeare's  plays,  or 
Concord  philosophy,  or  art  of  Angelo  or  Raphael,  something 
that  shines  illusive,  like  beams  of  Hesperus  at  evening— high 
above  all  the  vaunted  wealth  and  pride — proved  by  its  practical 
outcropping  in  life,  each  case  after  its  own  concomitants,  the  in- 
tuitive blending  of  divine  love  and  faith  in  a  human  emotional 
character — blending  for  all,  for  the  unlearned,  the  common,  and 
the  poor.  (Pr.,  p.  472.) 

What  is  poor,  plain  George  Fox  compared  with  William 
Shakespeare — to  fancy's  lord,  imagination's  heir?  Yet  George 
Fox  stands  for  something,  too,  a  thought,  the  thought  that  wakes 
in  silent  hours — perhaps  the  deepest,  most  eternal  thought  latent 
in  the  human  soul.  This  is  the  thought  of  God,  merged  in  the 
thoughts  of  moral  right,  and  the  immortality  of  identity.  Great, 
great  is  this  thought — aye,  greater  than  all  else,  .  .  .  the  only 
certain  source  of  what  all  are  seeking,  but  few  or  none  find — in  it 
I  for  myself  see  the  first,  the  last,  the  deepest  depths  and  highest 
heights  of  art,  of  literature,  and  of  the  purposes  of  life.  I  say, 
whoever  labors  here,  makes  contributions  here,  or,  best  of  all,  sets 
an  incarnated  example  here,  of  life  or  death — is  dearest  to  hu- 
manity— remains  after  the  rest  are  gone.  And  here,  for  these 
purposes,  and  up  to  the  light  that  was  in  him,  the  man  Elias 
Hicks — as  the  man  George  Fox  had  done  years  before  him — lived 
long,  and  died,  faithful  in  life,  and  faithful  in  death.  (Pr.,  p.  476.) 


WHAT  IS  KELIGION?  15 

I  have  transcribed  these  two  paragraphs  because 
they  are  likely  to  help  the  perplexed  student  to  a 
better  understanding  of  Whitman.  He  can  not  bear 
to  have  abstractions  compete  for  our  interest  with  men 
and  women.  Better  than  any  theology  is  a  man. 
Better  than  any  metaphysical  idea  of  God  is  a  woman. 
(p.  175.)  It  is  after  all  the  idea  of  the  diety  incar- 
nated by  avatars  in  human  form  (p.  115)  that  alone 
seriously  interests  him. 

He  sees  eternity  in  men  and  women ;  he  does  not  see  men 
and  women  as  dreams  or  dots.  (p.  270.) 

"  In  the  faces  of  men  and  women,"  he  sees  "  God," 
and  in  his  "  own  face  in  the  glass."  (p.  76.)  Every 
thing  is  for  the  soul's  sake.  To  be  of  worth,  it  must 
contribute  to  the  soul.  "  The  universe  itself"  is 
merely  "  a  road  .  .  .  for  traveling  souls."  (p.  127.) 

What  then  is  religion  ?  A  state  of  the  soul  ? 
What  then  is  God?  A  vision  the  soul  obtains  of 
itself?  According  to  Whitman,  these  would  be  fair 
definitions.  And  in  these  definitions  he  would  not  be 
straying  far  from  Quakerism  as  he  understood  it. 

The  true  Christian  religion  (such  was  the  teaching  of  Elias 
Hicks)  consists  neither  in  rites,  or  bibles,  or  sermons,  or  Sundays, 
but  in  noiseless,  secret  ecstasy  and  unremitted  aspiration,  in 
purity,  in  a  good  practical  life,  in  charity  to  the  poor  and  tolera- 
tion to  all.  .  .  .  He  believed  little  in  church  as  organized, 
.  .  .  but  he  believed  always  in  the  Universal  Church,  in  the 
soul  of  man,  invisibly  rapt,  ever-waiting,  ever-responding  to  uni- 
versal truths.  (Pr.,  note,  p.  464).* 


*  Whitman  views  religion  as  essentially  unsocial :     "  I  should 
/>  say,  indeed,  that  only  in  the  perfect  uncontamination  and  soli- 
tariness of  individuality  may  the  spirituality  of  religion  posi- 
tively come  forth  at  all.    Only  here,  and  on  such  terms,  the  mani- 


16  WALT   WHITMAN. 

It  is  the  doctrine  of  "  the  light  within  "  which 
constitutes  the  vital  core  of  Quakerism.  Walt  Whit- 
man perceives  a  kinship  thus  between  Fox  and  Hicks 
and  Plato.  It  is  the  same  "  doctrine  that  the  ideals 
of  character,  of  justice,  of  religious  action,  whenever 
the  highest  is  at  stake,  are  to  be  conformed  to  no  out- 
side doctrine  of  creeds,  bibles,  legislative  enactments, 
conventionalities,  or  even  decorums,  but  are  to  follow 
the  inward  deity-planted  law  of  the  emotional  soul." 
(Pr.,  p.  465.)  In  his  prefatory  note  (Pr.,  p.  455),  he 
comments  on  Hicks  as  "  pointing  to  the  fountain  of 
all  ...  religion  .  .  .  in  yourself  and  your  in- 
herent relations."  "  Others  talk  of  bibles,  etc.,  .  .  . 
the  canons  outside  of  yourself,"  .  .  .  but  Elias 
Hicks  points  "to  the  religion  inside  of  man's  very 
own  nature." 

The  point  at  which  Walt  Whitman  takes  issue 
with  Elias  Hicks  is  the  Quaker's  thorough  exclusive  be- 
lief in  the  Hebrew  scriptures.  Walt  Whitman  has 
not  restricted  himself  to  them,  so  that  his  own  reli- 
gion might  be  termed  a  Quakerism  cut  loose  con- 
sistently from  the  last  shadow  of  external  authority, 
not  substituting  for  the  Bible  any  concensus  even  of 
all  the  sacred  books  of  the  world.  Nor  is  he  unap- 
preciative  of  these.  Only  he  observes  : 

I  do  not  say  they  are  not  divine ; 
I  say  they  have  all  grown  out  of  you,  and  may  grow  out  of  you 

still. 

It  is  not  they  who  give  the  life ;  it  is  you  who  give  the  life. 
Leaves  are  not  more  shed  from  the  trees,  or  trees  from  the  earth, 

than  they  are  shed  from  you.  — (p.  172.) 

festations,  the  devout  ecstasy,  the  soaring  flight,"  etc.  The  rest  of 
this  interesting  paragraph  is  well  worth  referring  to.  "  Democratic 
Vistas."  (Pr.,  p.  233.) 


WHAT   IS   RELIGION?  17 

If  it  is  possible  for  the  soul  to  get  "  passage  in- 
deed to  primal  thought/'  to  its  "  own  clear  fresh- 
ness," to  "realms  of  budding  bibles"  (p.  320),  why 
should  a  man  any  longer  "  take  things  at  second  or 
third  hand,"  or  "  look  through  the  eyes  of  the  dead," 
or  "  feed  on  the  specters  of  books  ?  "  Why  not  "  filter 
them  from  oneself?"  (p.  30.)  Even  the  «  saviours  " 
are  "  countless,"  but  only  historical  or  mythical  names 
for  " saviours  latent  within"  oneself,  where  "bibles" 
"  equal  to  any  "  can  be  unclasped  and  read.  (p.  350.) 
The  "  outside  authority"  ought  always  to  enter  after 
the  precedence  of  inside  authority,  (p.  153.)  With 
such  a  rigid  test  as  his,  "  outside  authority  "  in  the 
matter  of  spiritual  beliefs,  it  is  clear  there  can  be 
none.  It  is,  to  be  sure,  only  the  old  Catholic  test,  the 
"  ab  omnibus,"  which,  with  the  Christian  traditionalist, 
however,  always  carefully  excludes  the  heretic  as 
though  he  were  non-existent.  The  appeal  was  to  the 
universal  consensus,  but  the  nature  of  what  the  con- 
sensus ought  to  be  was  so  preassumed  as  to  eliminate 
objectionable  factors.  With  Whitman  there  is  no 
such  petitio  principii. 

Only  what  proves  itself  to  every  man  and  woman  is  so. 
Only  what  nobody  denies  is  so.  (p.  83.) 

As  for  the  "  inside  authority  "  it  is  challenged 
and  brought  into  play  by  the  outside  world : 

All  truths  wait  in  all  things,   (p.  53). 

All  truths  of  the  earth  continually  wait,  they  are  not  so  concealed 
either, 

They  are  calm,  subtle,  intransmissible  by  print. 

They  are  imbued  through  all  things,  conveying  themselves  will- 
ingly, 

Conveying  a  sentiment  and  invitation,    (p.  176.) 


18  WALT  WHITMAN. 

The  tests  of  truth  are  always, 

Inner,  serene,  unapproachable  to  analysis,  in  the  soul, 

Not  traditions,  not  the  outer  authorities  are  the  judges, 

They  are  the  judges  of  outer  authorities  and    of  all  traditions. 

—(p.  305.) 
In  fact, 

Whatever  satisfies  souls  is  true.    (p.  201.) 

If  your  soul  is  diseased  it  can  not  be  trusted. 
Yet,  again,  you  would  have  to  trust  your  soul  as  to 
what  healthier  man  should  be  made  your  test.  For 
of  course  arguments  do  not  convince.  They  usually 
are  excuses  the  soul  furnishes  to  the  mechanical  side 
of  itself  for  entertaining  certain  convictions.  In  the 
last  analysis  "  outside  authority  "  invariably  turns  out 
to  be  "  inside  authority,"  more  or  less  arbitrarily  at- 
tached to  some  exterior  symbol. 

How  beggarly  appear  arguments  before  a  defiant  deed ! 

How  the  floridness  of  the  materials  of  cities  shrivels  before  a  man's 

or  woman's  look ! 

All  waits  or  goes  by  default  till  a  strong  being  appears ; 
A  strong  being  is  the  proof  of  the  race  and  of  the  ability  of  the 

universe. 

When  he  or  she  appears  materials  are  overawed, 
The  dispute  on  the  soul  stops, 
The  old  customs  and  phrases  are  confronted,  turned  back,  or  laid 

away.    (p.  153.) 

Of  course  the  great  man  can  not  directly  en- 
lighten us,  but  though  "  Wisdom  can  not  be  passed 
from  one  having  it  to  another  not  having  it,"  though 
"  Wisdom  is  of  the  soul,  is  not  susceptible  of  proof," 
yet  "  Something  there  is  in  the  float  of  the  sight  of 
things  that  provokes  it  out  of  the  soul."  (p.  123). 
And  no  sight  is  so  potent  to  elicit  wisdom  from  our 
souls  as  the  sight  of  the  wise  man.  When  in  doubt  of 


WHAT   IS   RELIGION?  19 

my  very  being,  "A  morning  glory  at  my  window 
satisfies  me  more  than  the  metaphysics  of  books." 
(p.  39.)  More  than  "  a  university  course,"  and  the 
learned  memories  with  which  it  has  stored  the  soul, 
"A  slumbering  woman  and  child  convince."  (p.  175.) 

I  see  the  sleeping  babe  nestling  the  breast  of  its  mother, 
The  sleeping  mother  and  babe  hushed,  I  study  them  long  and 
long.     (p.  217.) 

And  the  last  resort  always  will  be  to  the  touch  of 
a  loving  hand.  All  "the  terrible  doubt  of  appear- 
ances "  is  answered : 

When  he  whom  I  love  travels  with  me  or  site  a  long  while  hold- 
ing me  by  the  hand, 

When  the  subtle  air,  the  impalpable,  the  sense  that  words  and 
reason  hold  not,  surround  us  and  pervade  us, 

Then  I  am  charged  with  untold  and  untellable  wisdom,  I  am 
silent,  I  require  nothing  further, 

I  can  not  answer  the  question  of  appearances  or  that  of  identity 
beyond  the  grave, 

But  I  walk  or  sit  indifferent,  I  am  satisfied, 

He  ahold  of  my  hand  has  completely  satisfied  me.     (p.  175.) 

Who  that  has  been  with  his  fellow-men  in  their 
sorest  need  has  not  found  that  all  one  man  can  do  for 
another  is  to  be  himself  strong,  convinced,  patient, 
and  to  press  the  sick  or  dying  doubter's  hand  ten- 
derly ? 

Considering,  however,  the  extent  to  which  he 
carries  out  all  its  implications,  we  ought  not  to  be 
amazed  when  we  find  Walt  Whitman's  doctrines  of 
the  inner  light  admitting  of  companions  from  lands 
and  literatures  strange  to  Christendom.  The  doctrine 
of  a  spiritual  body  of  St.  Paul  of  Tarsus,  Emanuel 
Swedenborg,  and  William  Blake  hobnobs  goodna- 
turedly  with  a  metempsychosis  doctrine  definitely 


v 


20  WALT   WHITMAN. 

indicated;  while  a  doctrine  of  cosmic  cycles  faintly 
looms  up  in  the  distance  ;  and  Vedantic  views  are  at 
times  expressed  with  such  originality  and  energy  as 
to  have  brought  a  smile  of  delight  to  the  serene  im- 
mobile countenance  of  a  Hindu  friend,  to  whom  I 
read  them. 

The  negative  and  positive  poles,  as  it  were,  of 
Whitman's  current  of  religion  can  be  pointed  out  now 
in  his  own  words.  On  the  one  hand  we  have  the 
-  "  divine  pride  of  a  man  in  himself — the  radical  foun- 
dation of  the  new  religion  "  (Pr.,  p.  246) ;  on  the  other 
hand  "  religious  "  is  defined  to  mean  "  possessing  the 
idea  of  the  infinite."  (Pr.,  p.  238.)  The  true  thing 
itself,  strictly  speaking,  is  neither,  but  their  union  : 

Yet  I  in  this  dull  scene  .  .  .  why  ain  I  so  (almost)  happy 
here  and  alone  ?  Why  would  any  intrusion  even  from  people  I 
like  spoil  the  charm  ?  But  am  I  alone  ?  Doubtless  there  comes  a 
time — perhaps  it  has  come  to  me — when  one  feels  through  his 
whole  being,  and  pronouncedly  in  the  emotional  part,  that 
identity  between  himself  subjectively  and  nature  objectively 
which  Schelling  and  Fichte  are  so  fond  of  pressing.  How  it  is, 
I  know  not,  but  I  often  realize  a  presence  here — in  clear  moods  I 
am  certain  of  it  (Pr.,  p.  105). 

Some  "vital  unseen  presence"  (Pr.,  p.  99)  haunts 
for  us  cold  nature — a  ghost  maybe  of  ourself.  "  The 
victorious  fusion  "  in  man  "  of  the  Real  and  Ideal," 
which  the  poet  sets  forth,  is  Religion.  (Pr.,  p.  398.) 

But  Walt  Whitman  puts  the  matter,  I  conceive, 
once  more  in  different  terms : 

Great— unspeakably  great— is  the  Will !  the  free  Soul  of  man. 
(Pr.,p.336.) 

Something  that  fully  satisfies— that  something  is  the  All,  and 
the  idea  of  the  All,  etc.  (Pr.,  p.  253.)  I  have  the  idea  of  all, 
and  am  all,  and  believe  in  all.  (p.  192.) 


WHAT   IS   RELIGION?  21 

"  The  eternal  soul  of  man  "  (Pr.,  p.  286)  is  to  be 
saved — freed — by  union  with  this  "  Idea  of  the  All." 
"  Liberty,"  he  tells  us  is  not  "  release  from  all  law." 

The  wise  see  in  it,  on  the  contrary,  the  potent  Law  of  Laws, 
namely,  the  fusion  and  combination  of  the  conscious  will,  or  par- 
tial individual  law,  with  those  universal,  eternal  unconscious 
ones  which  run  through  all  Time,  pervade  history,  prove  immor- 
tality, give  moral  purpose  to  the  entire  objective  world,  and  the 
last  dignity  to  human  life.  (Pr.,  p.  337.) 

The  whole  matter  is  restated  in  a  note  to  his  es- 
say, "Poetry  To-day  in  America."  (Pr.,  p.  299.)  The 
"  conscious  will "  is  to  be  reconciled  to  the  "  great  uncon- 
scious and  abysmic  second  will."  The  soul  is  to 
"cheerfully  range  itself  under  universal  laws,  and 
embody  them." 

But  unfamiliar  with  oriental  speculations,  or  not 
possessing  a  sure  grasp  of  the  principle  of  "  inner 
light "  and  what  it  logically  leads  to  (particularly  as 
the  Friends  never  followed  it  out  to  the  end,  re- 
strained, unconsciously  by  the  language  of  Christian 
theological  tradition),  there  may  be  those  who  find  it 
difficult  to  represent  tb-  themselves  the  position  of 
Whitman.  Another  method  of  approach  may  per- 
haps serve  them  in  good  stead.  I  shall  allow  myself, 
therefore,  a  brief  abstract  disquisition,  with  no  intent 
of  converting  them  to  Whitman,  or  any  notion  of 
stating  personal  views. 

There  are  the  great  ecstatic  moments  of  the  soul. 
Strange  moments  !  *  To  some  they  have  come  in  na- 
ture, to  others  "  at  a  meeting ;"  to  some  from  an  idea, 
to  others  from  an  ideal ;  to  some  meditating  on  scien- 


Cf.  Emerson's  Essay  on  the  "  Over  Soul." 


22  WALT  WHITMAN. 

tific  law,  to  others  in  poetic  dreams ;  to  some  during 
metaphysical  speculations,  to  others  when  confronted 
with  a  living  character.  In  every  instance,  however, 
the  rapture  was  of  the  same  nature.  The  soul  became 
fluid  feeling,  and  embraced  the  visible  universe  as  the 
ocean  would  an  island ;  and  now  the  man  has  ebbed 
back  to  his  ordinary  self,  the  old  indefinite  extent  of 
conscious  feeling  at  ecstatic  high  tide  is  thought  to  ex- 
ist, apart  from  him,  centered  outside  of  him.  There 
arises  thus  a  painful  sense  of  the  gap  between  the  self 
of  ecstasy  and  the  self  of  ordinary  thought  and  feel- 
ing. Having  once  experienced  the  blissful  oblitera- 
tion of  all  hostility  to  the  soul,  the  momentary  swal- 
lowing up  of  all  that  claims  to  be  independent  of  the 
soul  by  the  soul,  one  can  never  again  be  rid  of  hun- 
ger and  thirst  for  the  renewal  of  the  experience  at 
least  in  some  degree.  All  beautiful  arts,  all  religious 
organizations,  are  separate  efforts  to  accomplish  this. 
Those  with  whom  these  means  are  invariably  success- 
ful, let  an  overflow  of  gratitude  glorify  them.  They 
praise  with  enthusiasm  statue,  picture,  symphony,  so- 
ciety, creed.  The  experience  thus  tends  to  become  all 
the  more  readily  an  empty  tradition.  Those  who 
have  not  had  it  very  naturally  suppose  that  the  works 
of  art  or  the  theological  doctrines  and  ecclesiastical 
rites  are  in  themselves  the  end,  instead  of  mere  means 
to  this  spiritual  ecstasy.  Occasionally  such  formalists 
stumble  on  the  true  meaning  of  the  doctrines  they 
have  received.  More  often  are  men  initiated  by  ex- 
treme sorrows  and  despairs.  Then  they  wonder 
they  could  have  so  long  handled  holy  things  without 
the  knowledge  of  their  true  purpose,  when,  after  all, 


WHAT   IS   RELIGION?  23 

they  bear  the  stamp  of  it  so  plainly  upon  them  for 
him  who  has  eyes  and  sees. 

Now,  one  reason  so  few  understand  this  mystic  se- 
cret of  religion  according  to  this  exposition,  is  the 
difficulty  of  suggesting  it  by  any  word.  Lay  the 
stress  on  the  ordinary  state  of  man — the  so-called  real, 
or  actual — more  properly  termed  the  apparent,  and 
the  obvious  danger  is  that  we  shall  consider  the  so- 
called  Ideal  (more  properly  the  Real)  as  a  god,  in- 
finitely different  from  us ;  and  then,  passing  by  use 
of  language  to  anthropomorphism — the  difference  will 
be  construed  as  a  quarrel : — a  sin  on  our  part  and  a 
wrath  on  his.  Atonement  in  order  to  Communion, 
becomes  then  easily  a  reconciliation  through  external 
mediators  and  through  sacrifices — the  teachers  being 
the  historic  basis  for  the  former,  their  sufferings 
or  the  hardships  necessary  to  attainment  of  the 
Ideal,  giving  an  objective  or  subjective  rationale  to  the 
latter.  Of  such  a  nature,  it  may  be  argued,  are  all 
exoteric  religions.  The  esoteric  side  of  every  religion, 
however,  lays  the  stress,  not  on  the  apparent,  but  the 
Real.  The  mystic  turns  his  eyes  inward.  He  can  not 
gaze  upon  the  real  core  of  his  own  being.  That 
phantom-self  vanishes  as  he  approaches,  until  the 
mystery  is  nameless,  awful,  infinite.  So  he  recognizes 
in  the  unfathomable  abyss  within,  the  self  of  hours 
of  ecstacy.  He  may  call  it  "  God,"  adopt  all  the 
language  of  his  unmystical  brethren,  but  for  him  it 
has  a  new  significance.  Whether  he  adopts  or  not 
their  terms  he  knows  it  as  Self.  The  danger,  how- 
ever, appears  very  soon.  To  communicate  his  mean- 
ing is  well-nigh  impossible.  In  all  probability  the 


24  WALT   WHITMAN. 

uninitiated  who  accepts  the  mystic  as  his  authority 
deludes  himself,  anticipates  results,  and  progress  is 
paralyzed.  He  thinks  there  is  nothing  to  do.  Be- 
cause he  knows  the  divine  is  the  Real  in  him,  he 
takes  no  pains  to  transform  the  apparent,  actual  man. 
He  gives  the  flesh,  mayhe  the  full  license  of  the  spirit, 
and  is  immoral  on  the  pretext  of  being  above  moral- 
ity. The  dualist,  emphasizer  of  the  apparent,  becomes 
contrariwise  in  all  probability,  if  he  be  in  earnest,  a 
chastiser  of  himself.  Thus  antinomianism  and  asceti- 
cism are  the  two  penalties  men  pay  for  embracing 
either  horn  of  the  dilemma,  and  misunderstanding 
the  true  meaning  : — a  God  without — viewed  as  sepa- 
rate, hostile,  to  be  reconciled  by  self-imposed  hard- 
ships; a  God  within — viewed  as  really  at  one  with  the 
worshiper,  arid  therefore  the  premature  assumption  of 
divine  freedom !  Many  Mystics  strive  to  overcome 
the  difficulty  by  using  both  lines  of  expression  alter- 
nately, and  thus,  by  oscillation  between  extremes,  to 
indicate  what  they  believe  to  be  the  true  mean. 

Now,  Walt  Whitman  prefers  to  speak  of  the 
potential  as  actual,  to  call  God,  Self,  as  a  rule  ;  though 
he  tries  to  obviate  misconstructions  by  occasional  use 
of  other  language,  and  a  constant  emphasis  on  the 
thought  of  growth  or  the  Hegelian  u  becoming." 
Change  is  a  death  and  a  birth.  What  is  must  cease 
to  be  in  order  that  what  is  to  be  may  come  into 
being.  We  have  had  talk  of  "  death  unto  the 
flesh,"  and  "  birth  from  above,"  with  equivalent 
phrases,  more  or  less  understood,  for  now  nine- 
teen centuries.  Whitman  prefers  to  use  the  con- 
ception of  evolution  or  growth  instead  of  those 


DIVINE   PRIDE.  25 

two  terms  which  together  express  the  same  thought. 
He  uses  the  word  "  death  "  to  indicate  the  unknown^ 
life.  He  adds  often  the  adjective  "  heavenly,"  lest  he 
be  misunderstood  to  mean  by  "  death  "  the  dissolution  \ 
of  the  body  or  of  the  soul.  Yet,  in  spite  of  every 
effort  to  be  clear,  he  is  steadily  misunderstood  by  most 
readers  for  years,  unless  they  have  chanced  to  study 
the  Idealist  philosophers  of  Germany,  the  Mystics  of 
Christian  centuries,  the  Neoplatonists,  or,  better  yet, 
for  interpreting  Emerson  and  Whitman,  the  Bhagavad 
Gita. 

DIVINE    PRIDE. 

Let  us  consider,  now,  first,  what  Whitman  calls 
"  the  radical  foundation  of  the  new  religion :"  the 
"  divine  pride  in  one's  self."  His  last  words  of  criti- 
cism upon  this  point  will  be  found  in  "A  Backward 
Glance  O'er  Travel* d  Roads."  (Appendix  to  Leaves 
of  Grass,  p.  435.) 

"  I  think  this  pride  indispensable  to  an  American. 
I  think  it  not  inconsistent  with  obedience,  humanity, 
deference,  and  self-questioning." 

It  is  no  more  than  fair  to  accept  his  own  definition 
of  terms.  Whatever  would  be  wholty  inconsistent 
with  these  states  of  mind  and  heart  is  then  not  what 
Whitman  means  by  "  pride."  One  is  free,  no  doubt, 
to  reprehend  his  use  of  the  word.  Perhaps,  however, 
it  will  not  be  so  easy  to  find  a  less  objectionable 
term. 

And  here,  in  considering  the  attitude  Whitman 
takes  toward  his  present  undeveloped  self  because  of 
its  great,  unspeakable  destiny,  we  can  not  too  forcibly 
remind  ourselves  that  he  does  not  say  these  things  of 


26  WALT   WHITMAN. 

himself  as  other  than  us ;  that  he  really  means  to  put 

them  in  our  mouths : 

I  will  effuse  egotism  and  show  it  underlying  all.     (p.  24.) 

I  celebrate  myself  and  sing  myself, 

And  what  I  assume  you  shall  assume,     (p.  29.) 

All  I  mark  as  my  own  you  shall  offset  it  with  your  own, 
L'  Else  it  were  time  lost  listening  to  me.    (p.  44.) 

It  is  you  talking  just  as  much  as  myself;  I  act  as  the  tongue 

of  you, 
Tied  in  your  mouth,  in  mine  it  begins  to  be  loosened,     (p.  75.) 

I  know  perfectly  well  my  own  egotism, 

Know  my  omnivorous  lines  and  must  not  write  any  less, 

And  would  fetch  you  whoever  you  are  flush  with  myself,     (p.  69.) 

He  hints  that  in  the  "Answerer,"  or  Maker  of 
s  /     Ideals,  men  ought  not  to,  and  do  not,  revere  another, 
whatever  they  may  fancy: 

Him  they  accept,  in  him  lave,  in  him  perceive  themselves  as  amid 
light,    (p.  134.) 

If  not,  how  could  the  "Answerer"  or  Messiah  be 
of  use  to  men  ? 

And,  finally,  in  order  that  his  object  in  singing 
himself  may  be  clear  to  all,  he  uses  the  pronoun 
'•  you"  in  the  following  lines,  as  well  as  in  the  glorious 
poem,  "  To  You :  "  (p.  186.) 

Whoever  you  are !  motion  and  reflection  are  especially  for  you, 

The  divine  ships  sail  the  divine  sea  for  you. 

Whoever  you  are !  you  are  he  or  she  for  whom  the  earth  is  solid 

and  liquid ; 

You  are  he  or  she  for  whom  the  sun  and  moon  hang  in  the  sky, 
For  none  more  than  you  are  the  present  and  the  past, 
For  none  more  than  you  is  immortality. 
Each  man  to  himself  and  each  woman  to  herself  is  the  word  of 

the  past  and  the  present,  and  the  true  word  of  immortality ; 


DIVINB   PRIDE.  27 

No  one  can  acquire  for  another— not  one, 
Not  one  can  grow  for  another — not  one,    .     .     . 
And  no  man  understands  any  greatness  or  goodness  but  his  own, 
or  the  indication  of  his  own.     (p.  178.) 

Let  no  reader,  then,  be  any  more  disturbed  by 
Lombrosian  qualms  at  Whitman's  supposed  "  Megalo- 
mania." The  very  essence  of  the  disease  is  absurd 
exaltation  of  oneself  at  the  expense  of  one's  neigh- 
bor ;  while  Whitman's  egotism  is  displayed  only  to  en- 
gender the  like  in  his  reader,  which,  whatever  one 
may  think  of  it,  is  quite  a  different  thing.  Neverthe- 
less, the  manner  of  Walt  Whitman  is  so  frankly  ar- 
rogant, he  urges  such  extraordinary  claims  for  us,  that 
many  a  beginner  insists  on  not  taking  him  at  his  word 
and  on  supposing  he  meant  all  these  vast  attributes 
and  defiant  attitudes  to  be  descriptive  only  of  his 
private  personality!  On  this  point,  at  the  risk  of 
being  tedious,  one  can  not  lay  too  much  stress.  Stand- 
ing at  the  grave  of  Emerson,  Whitman  uttered  these 
words :  * 

A  just  man,  poised  on  himself,  all-loving,  all  inclosing  and 
sane  and  clear  as  the  sun.  Nor  does  it  seem  so  much  Emerson 
himself  we  are  here  to  honor— it  is  conscience,  simplicity,  cult- 
ure, humanity's  attributes  at  their  best,  yet  applicable,  if  need  be, 
to  average  affairs,  and  eligible  to  all.  (Pr.,  p.  197.) 

Elsewhere  in  a  very  interesting  critique  on  Emer- 
son, he  says  of  him  : 

His  final  influence  is  to  make  his  students  cease  to  worship 
any  thing— almost  cease  to  believe  in  any  thing  outside  of  them- 
selves. (Pr.,  p.  320.) 


Whether  actually  spoken,  I  do  not  know. 


28  WALT   WHITMAN. 

Now,  Whitman  would  not  have  us  do  this 
"almost,"  but  altogether: — 

You  shall  not  look  through  my  eyes  either,  nor  take  things 

from  me, 
You  shall  listen  to  all  sides  and  filter  them  for  yourself,  (p.  30.) 

What  were  the  advantage  cutting  us  loose  from 
all  glorious  traditions,  if  he  should,  in  his  turn,  become 
one  himself,  and  repress  our  development  from  within, 
which  he  held  as  the  one  law  of  sterling  manhood  ? 

Not  I,  nor  any  one  else,  can  travel  that  road  for  you, 
You  must  travel  it  for  yourself,    (p.  73.) 

Besides,  he  definitely  teaches  "  straying  from  him- 
self :"  (p.  75.) 

Each  singing  what  belongs  to  him  or  her  and  to  no  one  else. 

-(p.  17.) 

And  he  puts  it  very  unmistakably  in  fourteen  lines, 
using  the  figure  of  the  "  teacher  of  athletes/'  which 
end: — 

He  most  honors  my  style  who  learns  under  it  to  destroy  the 
teacher,    (p.  74.) 

In  this  matter  surely  he  has  been  less  of  an  ego- 
tist than  most  men  of  genius.  Only  now  and  then 
does  he  refer  to  himself  as  a  separate  person  from  the 
reader,  and  then  it  is  modestly,  sometimes  pathetically 
-4  (e.  g.,  "As  I  ebbed  with  the  Ocean  of  Life." — Stanza  2, 
p.  202).  "  Every  great  character,"  Whitman  observes 
(writing  of  Elias  Hicks),  is  "adjusted  strictly  with 
reference  to  itself."  (Pr.,  p.  472.)  The  great  lesson 
of  nature  is  poise,  self-sufficiency,  appropriation  from 
without  only  of  what  can  be  subordinated  to  the  life 


DIVINE   PRIDE.  29 

that  makes   us   grow  from  within,  and  so,  assimi- 
lated :— 

I  will  confront  these  shows  of  the  day  and  night, 

I  will  know  if  I  am  to  be  less  than  they, 

I  will  see  if  I  am  not  as  majestic  as  they, 

I  will  see  if  I  am  not  as  subtle  and  real  as  they, 

I  will  see  if  I  am  to  be  less  generous  than  they, 

I  will  see  if  I  have  no  meaning,  while  the  houses  and  ships  have 

meaning, 
I  will  see  if  the  fishes  and  birds  are  to  be  enough  for  themselves, 

and  I  am  not  to  be  enough  for  myself,    (p.  275.) 

Unconscious  contact  with  "  serene  moving  ani- 
mals teaching  content "  and  "  the  primal  sanities  of 
nature"  (p.  244),  is  the  reason  that 

The  secret  of  the  making  of  the  best  persons, 

Is  to  grow  in  the  open  air,  and  to  eat  and  sleep  with  the  earth. 

-(P-  123.) 

On  this  account,  his  "Leaves  of  Grass"  lies  "un- 
born or  dead  "  in  libraries,  (p.  98.)  It  is  not  so  much 
that  he  refuses  to  "translate"  himself,  "except  in  the 
open  air"  (p.  75),  but  that  the  seclusion  between  the 
four  walls  makes  for  the  ordinary  reader  any  expansive 
"divine  pride"  difficult;  and  not  merely  in  the  case 
of  architecture  or  music,  but  in  that  of  every  art 
whatsoever,  in  the  last  analysis,  as  he  tells  us : 

All  ...  is  what  you  do  to  it  when  you  look  upon  it. 

All  ...  is  what  awakes  from  you.  ...    (p.  173 ;  cf.  p.  282.)* 

But  he  who  contemplates  the  continence  of  vege- 
tables, birds,  animals,  can  not  but  feel  with  Whit- 
man 


*  For  the  open  air,  therefore,  as  a  test  of  literary  worth,  cf.  Pr. 
199  and  501,  with  p.  433  in  "  Leaves  of  Grass." 


30  WALT   WHITMAN. 

The  consequent  meanness  of  me  should  I  skulk,  or  find  myself 
indecent,  while  birds  or  animals  never  once  skulk  or  find 
themselves  indecent,  (p.  91.) 

Elsewhere,  again,  in  his  grim  way,  he  makes  us 
laugh  at  the  proud  "  Lord  of  Nature,"  so  called : — 

I  think  I  could  turn  and  live  with  animals,  they  are  so  placid 

and  self-contained, 

I  stand  and  look  at  them  long  and  long. 
They  do  not  sweat  and  whine  about  their  condition.    .    .    . 
Not  one  is  respectable  or  happy  over  the  whole  earth,    (p.  54.) 

Consequently — he  continues  the  thought  else- 
where,— 

I  do  not  trouble  my  spirit  to  vindicate  itself  or  be  understood, 
I  see  that  the  elementary  laws  never  apologize. 
I  reckon  I  behave  no  prouder  than  the  level  I  plant  my  house 
by,  after  all.     (p.  45.) 

And  I  say  to  any  man  or  woman,  let  your  soul  stand  cool  and 
composed  before  a  million  universes,  (p.  76.) 

If  ever  Whitman  is  sublime,  it  is  when  he  chants 
this  self-centered  "  spiritual  manhood  poised "  on 
itself,  "giving,  not  taking  law."  (p.  167.) 

The  joy  of  manly  selfhood ! 

To  be  servile  to  none,  to  defer  to  none,  not  to  any  tyrant  known 
or  unknown, 

To  walk  with  erect  carriage,  a  step  springy  and  elastic, 

To  look  with  calm  gaze  or  with  a  flashing  eye, 

To  speak  with  a  full  and  sonorous  voice  out  of  a  broad  chest, 

To  confront  with  your  personality  all  the  other  personalities  of 
the  earth,  (p.  146.) 

O,  while  I  live,  to  be  the  ruler  of  life,  not  a  slave, 

To  meet  life  as  a  powerful  conqueror, 

No  fumes,  no  ennui,  no  more  complaints  or  scornful  criticisms, 

To  these  proud  laws  of  the  air,  the  water  and  the  ground,  prov- 
ing my  soul  impregnable, 

And  nothing  exterior  shall  ever  take  command  of  me.    (p.  147.) 


DIVINE   PRIDE.  31 

0  to  be  self-balanced  for  contingencies, 

To  confront  night,  storms,  hunger,  ridicule,  accidents,  rebuffs, 
as  the  trees  and  animals  do.    (p.  16.) 

"  Why  should  I  pray  ?  Why  should  I  venerate 
and  be  ceremonious?"  asks  Whitman,  (p.  44.)  Yet 
communion  of  the  soul  with  God  within  is  the  very 
end  and  aim  of  life.  None  has  framed  a  nobler  prajer 
than  that  he  has  put  into  the  mouth  of  Columbus, 
(p.  323).  Nor  does  Whitman  fail  to  follow  the 
maxim  of  Rossetti  in  Soothsay : 

To  God  at  best,  to  chance  at  worst, 
Give  thanks  for  good  things,  last  as  first. 

He  is  always  overflowing  with  gratitude  and  love. 
His  prose  is  full  of  praise  and  thanksgiving  and 
usually  we  feel  that  it  goes — as  "  at  best  "  it  should — 
to  God.  (p.  398).  K 

But  the  real  questions  for  the  disturbed  reader  of 
Whitman  to  ask  himself  would  be,  "  what  really  is 
worship?"  and  "what  is  worship  for?"  The  pur- 
pose of  uttered  worship  is  relief  to  the  soul  which  can 
not  any  longer  endure  the  pressure  of  pent  adoration. 
It  is  to  uplift  the  soul,  not  in  any  sense  to  confer  a 
favor  on  its  god.  And  the  purpose  of  worship  defines 
its  true  nature.  Not  the  cries  of  "  Lord,  Lord " 
(Lk.  vi,  46 ;  Matt,  vii,  21-23),  but  the  doing  of  the 
will  is  the  main  ingredient.  How  idolatrous  we  are 
it  is  not  easy  for  a  mind  unused  to  watching  its  own 
motions  fully  to  realize.  Have  you  rid  yourself  of 
"  idols  made  with  hands  ?  "  Well,  so  far,  so  good. 
Have  you  wholly  rid  yourself  of  idols  made  by  the 
imagination  ?  If  not,  then  you  are  worshiping  dis- 
embodied idols,  ghosts  of  idols.  Is  it  BO  wise  to 


32  WALT   WHITMAN. 

decry  idolatry,  when  perhaps  you  shall  find  one  man 
only  in  a  million  really  able  to  worship  God  in  his  un- 
represented Being  ?  Would  not  such  worship  be  prac- 
tically atheistic  for  all  but  that  extremely  small  num- 
ber who  can  understand  that  what  most  utterly  eludes 
all  thought  is  the  most  real  ? 

To  Whitman,  of  course,  God  is  Subject  of  subject, 
Object  of  object.  Behind  yourself  is  God.  Behind 
the  universe  is  God.  You  and  the  universe  are  the 
two-fold  veil  of  the  One.  True  worship  is  worship  of 
that  One.  Obedience  to  the  Maker  is  being  yourself. 
To  be  real  is  the  best  homage  to  Reality.  If  there  is 
to  be  worship,  it  will  be  beyond  words — or  it  will  pass 
through  one  of  the  two  symbols — (yourself  and  the 
universe) — or  through  both  at  one  and  the  same  time. 
Such  verbal  identification  of  the  One  with  these  is  un- 
satisfactory. Yet,  so  long  as  the  One  Reality  passes  our 
thought,  because  thought  invariably  analyzes  being 
into  subject  and  predicate  (as  Plotinus  long  ago 
showed),  we  must  not  speak  of  It  at  all,  or  be  con- 
tent to  give  It  in  terms  of  that  which  we  expressly 
say  It  is  not.  Nor  is  such  language  improper.  Even 
if  we  are  to  realize  in  "  ecstacy"  the  nature  of  this 
"  Reality,"  we  shall  have  to  pass  beyond  thought 
through  some  such  inadequate  self-contradictory 
thought  of  the  Unthinkable. 

Whitman  in  his  prefaces  to  Leaves  of  Grass  for 
1855  to  1872  and  1876  fully  enough  expounds  his 
ideas  on  the  subject  of  the  poet  and  his  office,  and  the 
aims  of  his  own  performance.  To  give  a  provisional 
body  to  the  Spirit  of  religion  until  it  be  incarnate 
fully  in  men  and  women — readers  of  such  poetry — is 
the  highest  duty  of  the  poet.  (Of.  Pr.  272-279.) 


DIVINE    PRIDE.  33 

It  was  originally  my  intention,  after  chanting  in  "  Leaves  of 
Grass,"  the  songs  of  the  body  and  existence,  to  then  compose  a 
further  equally  needed  volume,  based  on  those  convictions  of  per- 
petuity and  conservation  which,  enveloping  all  precedents,  make 
the  unseen  soul  govern  absolutely  at  the  last.  I  meant  while  in 
a  sort  continuing  the  theme  of  my  first  chants,  to  shift  the  slides 
and  exhibit  the  problem  and  paradox  of  the  same  ardent  and 
fully  appointed  personality  entering  the  sphere  of  the  resistless 
gravitation  of  spiritual  law,  and  with  cheerful  face  estimating 
death,  not  at  all  as  the  cessation,  but  as  somehow  what  I  feel  it  %  . 
must  be,  the  entrance  upon  by  far  the  greatest  part  of  existence, 
and  something  that  life  is  at  least  as  much  for  as  it  is  for  itself. 
But  the  full  construction  of  such  a  work  is  beyond  my  powers, 
and  must  remain  for  some  bard  in  the  future.  The  physical  and 
the  sensuous,  in  themselves  or  their  immediate  continuations,  retain  holds 
upon  me  which  /  think  are  never  entirely  released ;  and  those  holds  T 
have  not  only  not  denied,  but  hardly  wish  to  weaken.  (Pr.,  p.  281 ; 
C/.  footnote,  Pr.,  p.  284.) 

This  paragraph  I  transcribe,  because  it  ought  to 
prevent  us  seeking  in  Whitman's  work  what  he  does 
not  profess  to  furnish.  The  highest  rapture  which  he 
conceives  possible  is  denied  him.  Greater  poets  and(/ 
prophets  are  to  come  than  those  that  have  been.  In 
the  domain  of  the  very  highest,  he  feels  his  unfitness 
for  a  sufficiently  bold  flight. 

Over  the  mountain  growths— disease  and  sorrow,— 
An  uncaught  bird  is  ever  hovering,  hovering, 
High  in  the  purer,  happier  air. 

From  imperfection's  murkiest  cloud, 
Darts  always  forth  one  ray  of  perfect  light, 
One  flash  of  heaven's  glory,    (p.  182.) 

"A  soul-sight  of  that  divine  clue"  (Pr.,  p.  174)  is 
vouchsafed  him,  "a  guiding  thread  so  fine  along  the 
mighty  labyrinth."  It  is  "  belief  in  the  plan  "  of  God, 
"  inclosed  in  time  and  space — health,  peace,  salvation 


NJ 


34  WALT   WHITMAN. 

universal."  (p.  182.)  You  may  retort :  "  This  is  vague." 
Nevertheless,  Whitman  may  be  right  when  he  says: 
"  The  faintest  indication  is  the  indication  of  the  best,— 
and  then,  becomes  the  clearest  indication."  (Pr.,  p.  267.) 

Is  it  a  dream  ? 

Nay,  but  the  lack  of  it  the  dream, 

And  failing  it,  life's  lore  and  wealth  a  dream, 

And  all  the  world  a  dream,     (p.  183.) 

If,  in  the  superb  "  Song  of  the  Universal,"  he  is 
breathless  with  the  burden  of  the  Spirit  of  God,  in 
the  allegory  of  "  the  Passage  to  India,"  which  he  ex- 
pressly declares  to  be  a  sort  of  last  word  (Pr.,  foot- 
note, p.  280),  he  makes  his  intentions  clear  enough  : 

Swiftly  I  shrivel  at  the  thought  of  God, 

At  Nature  and  its  wonders,  Time  and  Space  and  Death, 

But  that  I,  turning,  call  to  thee,  O  Soul,  thou  actual  Me, 

And  lo,  thou  gently  masterest  orbs, 

Thou  matest  Time,  smilest  content  at  Death, 

And  fittest,  swellest  full  the  vastnesses  of  Space,    (p.  321.) 

If  the  strain  is  great,  it  is  because  there  is  no  ef- 
fort to  hide  behind  words  or  rites : 

Ah  more  than  any  priest  0  Soul,  we  too  believe  in  God, 
But  with  the  mystery  of  God  we  dare  not  dally. 
Bathe  me,  O  God,  in  thee,  mounting  to  thee, 
I  and  my  soul  to  range  in  range  of  Thee.     (p.  321.) 

I  know  that  the  spirit  of  God  is  the  brother  of  my  own.  (p.  32.) 

Reckoning  ahead  0  Soul,  when  thou,  the  time  achieved, 
The  seas  all  crossed,  weathered  the  capes,  the  voyage  done, 
Surrounded,  copest,  frontest  God,  yieldest,  the  aim  attained, 
As,  filled  with  friendship,  love  complete,  the  Elder  Brother  found , 
The  Younger  melts  in  fondness  in  his  arms.     (p.  322.) 

More  definite  utterance  it  was  impossible  for 
Whitman  to  give  his  thought.  So  long  as  there  is 


WORSHIP.  35 

consciousness  of  God  as  separate  and  distinct,  com- 
munion is  not  entire ;  when  it  is  entire,  self  merges 
with  Self,  the  younger  brother  and  the  Elder  Brother 
pass  away,  and  the  One  alone  is. 

WORSHIP. 

In  the  close  of  the  magnificent  poem  just  quoted 
from,  Whitman  describes  the  Absolute  as  the  "you" 
of  waters,  woods,  mountains,  prairies,  clouds,  suns 
and  stars.  Idolatry  is  always  the  refuge  of  wing- 
weary  aspirants. 

My  rendezvous  is  appointed,  it  is  certain, 
The  Lord  will  be  there  and  wait  till  I  come  on  perfect  terms, 
The  great  Comerado,  the  lover  true  for  whom  I  pine,  will  be 
there,    (p.  73.) 

Then  why  strive  to  anticipate?  Visions  of  Him 
would  be  premature,  and,  maybe,  if  over-distinct,  in- 
jurious to  progress  in  the  Soul's  consolidation  for  an 
eternal  identity  aware  of  itself  in  God.  Let  symbols 
suffice  for  the  present!  His  "Gods"  are  various 
names  of  the  One.  (p.  213.)  The  divine  Lover,  the 
Ideal  Man,  Death,  the  Best  Idea,  historic  heroisms, 
Time,  Space,  the  Earth,  the  Sun,  the  Stars.  But  of 
such  Gods,  or  symbols  of  God,  there  is  none  "  more 
divine  than  yourself."  (p.  299.)  None  more  than 
the  "  other  gods,  these  men  and  women  I  love."  (p. 
375.)  Besides,  it  is  clear,  no  symbol  is  so  significant 
as  one's  own  being  if  "  nothing  is  greater  to  one  than 
one's  self  is"  (p.  76),  particularly  if  the  thought  of 
God  as  other  than  the  Reality  of  you,  is  the  thought 
of  something  beyond  knowledge  and  intuition.  "The 
unseen  is  proved  by  the  seen"  (p.  31), and  the  body  is 


36  WALT   WHITMAN. 

symbol  of  the  soul.  It  is  so  much  of  the  soul  as  we 
perceive  through  the  senses.  Therefore,  if  you  per- 
sist in  asking  what  he  worships,  he  answers : 

If  I  worship  one  thing  more  than  another,  it  shall  be  the  spread  of 
my  own  body ;  (p.  49.) 

and  he  will  not  shrink  from  a  complete  delight  in 
it — that  most  eloquent  word,  if  "  things  "  be  indeed  as 
"Whitman  conceives,  "  words  of  God."  (Cf.  p.  176.) 

I  dote  on  myself,  there  is  that  lot  of  me  and  all  so  luscious, 
Each  moment  and  whatever  happens  thrills  me  with  joy.    (p.  49.) 

Nor  is  this  worship  of  the  body  so  alien  to  his  main 
purpose  as  it  might  seem.  It  is  not  mere  defiance. 
If  true  worship  of  the  Divine  is  to  make  the  self 
realize  its  dignity  as  that  which  proceeds  from  It,  ex- 
presses It,  goes  to  It;  and  if  the  body  is  for  us,  most 
of  the  time,  the  hieroglyph  for  self  and  soul;  it  is  of 
paramount  importance  to  realize  the  greatness,  the 
beauty,  the  sacred  nature  of  the  body.  "  Temple  of  the 
Holy  Ghost"  we  have  been  taught  to  call  it,  but 
thanks  to  a  strange  eclipse  of  much  of  its  glory  by  con- 
ventional clothes,  we  shrink  unconsciously  from  repre- 
senting ourselves  the  whole,  sound,  perfectly  developed 
body  as  athrill  with  God.  Yet,  "  If  any  thing  is 
sacred,  the  human  body  is  sacred."  (p.  86.)  And 
Whitman  means  to  rescue  for  himself  his  entire 
body  from  any  indignities  placed  upon  it  in  ages  of 
ignorance  or  impiety.  "  The  expression  of  a  well 
made  man  appears  not  only  in  his  face."  (p.  81.) 
"In  any  man  or  woman,  a  clean,  strong,  firm-fibered 
body  is  more  beautiful  than  the  most  beautiful  face." 
(p.  86.) 

Who  will  venture  to  praise  the  folds  of  drapery 


WORSHIP.  37 

as  more  graceful  and  modest  than  the  play  of  muscle 
and  sinew?  Not  alone  the  marbles  of  ancient  Greece 
shall  have  the  right  to  a  glorious  nudity.  In  his 
Prose  we  are  supplied  with  a  complete  commentary 
on  this,  to  many  adverse  critics,  the  most  objectionable 
part  of  Whitman's  work. 

Sweet,  sane,  still  Nakedness  in  Nature! — ah.  if  poor,  sick, 
purient  humanity  in  cities  might  really  know  you  once  more !  Is 
not  nakedness  then  indecent?  No,  not  inherently.  It  is  your 
thought,  your  sophistication,  your  fear,  your  respectability,  that  is 
indecent.  There  come  moods  when  these  clothes  of  ours  are  not 
only  too  irksome  to  wear,  but  are  themselves  indecent,  (p.  104.) 

An  entire  essay  in  his  Collect  is  devoted  to  this 
subject  and  makes  his  position  at  all  events  quite  in- 
telligible. (Pr.,  p.  302-306.)  "  To  the  pure  all  things," 
of  course,  "  are  pure,"  and  when  God  made  man  he 
ventured  to  think  his  work  all  "very  good."  The 
poet  surely  has  a  right  to  adopt  God's  point  of  view, 
and  if  he  does  not,  who  shall? 

I  swear  the  earth  shall  surely  be  complete  to  him  or  her  who  shall 

bo  complete, 
The  earth  remains  jagged  and  broken  only  to  him  or  her  who 

remains  jagged  and  broken,     (p.  179.) 

Old  as  the  world  is  and  beyond  statement  as  are  the  countless 
and  splendid  results  of  its  culture  and  evolution,  perhaps  the 
best,  and  earliest,  and  purest  intuitions  of  the  human  race  have 
yet  to  be  developed.  (Pr.  p.  306.) 

These  rudimentary  convictions  it  is  the  poet's 
special  business  to  bring  into  full  consciousness.  The 
bird  is  not  only  singing  for  his  mate,  but  also  for  the 
eggs  she  covers  with  ruffled  feathers,  (p.  24.)  One  of 
those  rudimentary  convictions  is  the  sacredness  of  the 
unadorned  body.  Still  why, 

"  If  I  worship   one  thing  more  than  another " 


38  WALT   WHITMAN. 

must  it  be  the  body?  Because  it  is  the  one  thing 
that  is  really  mine,  the  worship  of  which  exalts  me, 
and  implies  a  worship  still  more  devout  of  that  which 
can  not  be  called  a  "  thing,"  namely,  "  Me,"  who 
dwell  in  it.  i_> 

But  there  are  doubtless  some  who  do  not  yet  un- 
derstand. They  will  urge :  "  Is  there  no  greater  body 
than  your  body  ?  Is  there  no  greater  soul  than  your 
soul  ?  Why  not  prefer  to  wTorship  an  Apollo  Belve- 
dere ?  Why  not  bow,  if  bow  you  must,  to  the  soul  of 
Plato?  Surely  here  are  more  adequate  symbols — 
better  idols !"  Whitman  would  answer  : 

After  all  these  are  only  to  me  ideas.  If  that 
which  these  ideas  connote  be  greater  in  fact  to  an- 
other impartial  person  than  rny  body  and  my  soul, 
which  are  to  him  also  mere  ideas,  they  are  not  so  to 
me.  For  him  they  are  comparable.  For  me  they  are 
not.  My  body  is  something  more  to  me  than  the 
best  idea  of  a  body.  My  soul  is  something  more  to 
me  than  the  loftiest  notion  I  can  form  of  a  soul. 
Even  could  I  institute  a  comparison  and  realize  the 
superiority,  I  should  not  on  that  account  necessarily 
prefer  Apollo  and  Plato  as  symbols  of  the  Divine. 
"  The  seed  perfection  "  nestles  safely  inclosed  in  every 
being  (p.  181),  and  after  all  "  size  is  only  develop- 
ment." (p.  45.)  "Any  thing  is  but  a  part."  (p.  73.) 
Only  the  whole  is  really  divine.  Each  thing  in  its 
place  is  equally  fit  as  symbol  of  that  whole. 

I  do  not  call  the  tortoise  unworthy  because  she  is  not  something 

else.    (p.  38.) 

I  do  not  call  one  greater  and  one  smaller, 
That  which  fills  its  period  and  place  is  equal  to  any.     (p.  71.) 
Each  of  us  inevitable, 


WORSHIP.  39 

Each  of  us  limitless — each  of  us  with  his  or  her  right  upon  the 

earth, 

Each  of  us  allow'd  the  eternal  purports  of  the  earth, 
Each  of  us  here  as  divinely  as  any  is  here.     (p.  119.) 

After  all,  when  we  look  out  upon  the  world,  it  is 
a  fact  that  all  lines  converge  to  the  eye.  You  may 
deplore  this  if  you  choose.  You  may  argue  from  the 
fact  that  others  perceive  the  same  phenomenon,  that 
it  is  an  evident  illusion.  Yet,  as  long  as  you  wish  to 
paint  this  world,  you  will  have  to  accept  this  optic 
egotism  as  a  fundamental  fact  of  our  world.  Else 
what  you  paint  will  be  untrue  to  the  only  experience 
we  have  of  the  landscape. 

Have  you  thought  there  could  be  but  a  single  supreme? 

There  can  be  any  number  of  supremes — one  does  not  countervail 

another  any  more  than  one  eyesight  countervails  another,  or 

one  life  countervails  another. 
All  is  eligible  to  all, 
All  is  for  individuals,  all  is  for  you, 
No  condition  is  prohibited,  not  God's  or  any. 
iAli  comes  by  the  body,  only  health  puts  one  rapport  with  the 
\       universe,     (p.  264.) 

If  this  egotism  be  charged  against  us  as  crime,'  we 
can  but  say : 

The  universe  is  dulylin  order ;  every  thing  is  in  its  place. 

-(P- 331.) 
and  clearly, 

I  stand  in  my  place  with  my  own  day  here.    (p.  20.) 

If  the  past  and  its  names  interests  me,  how  much 
more  would  this  my  present  and  I  interest  the  men 
of  old? 

I  sat  studying  at  the  feet  of  the  great  masters. 
Now,  if  eligible,  O  that  the  great  masters  might  return  and  study 
me.    (p.  20.) 


40  WALT  WHITMAN. 

I  know  that  the  past  was  great  and  the  future  will  be  great, 
And  I  know  that  both  curiously  conjoint  in  the  present  time. 

-(p.  193.) 

As  the  corpse  was  fittest  for  its  days,  the  heir  is 
fittest  now  for  his.  (p.  266.)  Let  me  "  exalt  the  present 
and  the  real."  (p.  162.) 

Immense  have  been  the  preparations  for  me    .    .    . 
All  forces  have  been  steadily  employed  to  complete  and  de- 
light me. 
Now  on  this  spot  I  stand  with  my  robust  soul.    (p.  72.) 

In  literature,  we  may  have  supposed  we  could 
avoid  this  egocentric  perspective.  Thought  we  fancied 
is  impersonal.  But  only  the  infinite  circle  has  no 
center — or  has  its  center  every-where,  which  amounts 
to  the  same — and  the  mind  can  not  inclose  the  in- 
finite. It  can  "  drown  itself"  in  such  a  thought  as 
Leopardi  so  well  put  it.  If  the  soul  is  to  realize  its 
thought,  set  its  affections  upon  it,  make  of  the  idea 
an  ideal,  the  radius  must  be  finite,  and  then,  of  course, 
every  thing  once  more  groups  itself  about  you.  As 
Whitman  expressed  it,  "  even  for  the  treatment  of 
the  universal,  in  politics,  metaphysics,  or  any  thing, 
sooner  or  later  we  come  down  to  one  single,  solitary 
soul."  (Pr.,  p.  229.)  To  give  full  expression  to  this 
truth  was  the  "  Song  of  Myself"  written. 

Where  I  am    .    .    .    there  is  the  center  of  all,  there  is  the  mean- 
ing of  all.    (p.  193.) 

The  true  nature  of  things  I  do  not  penetrate. 
Nothing  is  transparent. 

We  fathom  you  not,  we  love  you.    .    .    . 

You  furnish  your  parts  toward  the  soul.    (p.  134.) 

Things    are    "only  inaudable  words."      (p.   176.) 
They  "  express  me  better  than  I  can  express  myself." 


WORSHIP.  41 

(p.  122.)  The  whole  world-show  is  but  "  myself  disin- 
tegrated "  (p.  129) ;  a  spectrum,  analysis,  so  to  speak, 
of  my  soul.  If  I  wish  to  contemplate  myself,  I  must 
"absorb  all"  the  sights  of  the  cities  "to  myself." 
(p.  38.)  They 

Tend  inward  to  me,  and  I  tend  outward  to  them, 
And  such  as  it  is  to  be  of  these  more  or  less  I  am, 
And  of  these  one  and  all  I  weave  the  song  of  myself. 

-(p.  41.) 

All  the  "  shows  of  Day  and  Night,"  "  I  absorb  all 
in  myself,  and  become  master  myself."     (p.  275.)    All 
history  "  tastes  good  and  becomes  mine."     (p.  59.) 
Even  the  civil  war  of  the  early  sixties  serves  me  best  /**"      .. 
by  illustrating  the  "vehement  struggle    .    V    .    for  ]f* 
unity  in  one's  self."     (p.  373.) 

Apart  from  my  view  of  them,  "  solid  things  "  only 
"  stand  for  realities."  In  that  sense,  too,  they  are 
words — not  merely  mirrors  of  myself. 

Have  you  ever  reckoned  that  the  landscape  took  substance  and 
form  that  it  might  be  painted  in  a  picture  ?    (p.  172.) 

Things,  however,  while  not  transparent,  are  at 
least  dimly  translucent,  and  the  Real,  that  filters 
through  them,  if  it  be  the  same  Real  that  shines 
through  me,  I  may  well  call  it  by  the  same  name.  I 
have  then  a  right — a  reasonable  right — to  identify 
myself  with  things,  not  merely  with  my  sensations 
and  notions  of  them,  but  with  what  they  are. 

Underneath  all  to  me  is  myself,  to  you  yourself,    (p.  274.) 
One's  self  must  never  give  way — that  is  the  final  substance  that 

out  of  all  is  sure.    .    .    . 
When  shows  break  up,  what  but  One's  Self  is  sure  ?    (p.  342.) 

The  proper  use  of  things,  then,  to  which  the  poet 
(and  according  to  Whitman  he  is  every  man)  is  bound 


42  WALT  WHITMAN. 

to  be  "  faithful "  (p.  271)  is  to  "  enter  by  them  to  an 
area  "  fit  for  the  self's  "  dwelling  "  (p.  47),  "  taking  all 
hints  to  use  them,  but  swiftly  leaping  beyond  them." 
(p.  197.)  For  the  business  of  the  soul  is  growth — 
growth  from  within.  My  business  is  but  to  "  ex- 
tricate" myself  out  of  myself,  (p.  351.) 

My  real  self  has  yet  to  come  forth, 

It  shall  yet  march  forth  o'ermastering,  till  all  lies  beneath  me, 

It  shall  yet  stand  up  the  soldier  of  ultimate  victory,     (p.  364.) 

If  for  this  I  need  the  outer  world  of  symbol  why 
expend  energy  on  seeking  the  rare  and  extraordinary  ? 

You  surely  come  back  at  last, 
In  things  best  known  to  you  finding  the  best.    (p.  175.) 

Because  after  all 

What  is  commonest,  cheapest,  nearest,  easiest,  is  Me, 
Me  going  in  for  my  chances,  spending  for  vast  returns, 
Adorning  myself  to  bestow  myself  on  the  first  that  will  take  me, 
Not  asking  the  sky  to  come  down  to  my  good  will, 
Scattering  it  freely,  forever,    (p.  39.) 

Rare  and  extraordinary  things  indeed  might  over- 
awe me,  I  might  forget  that  I  was  really  master.  In 
the  magnitude  and  novelty  of  my  experience,  per- 
haps, some  rival  to  my  soul  would  lurk.  My  ideal  is 
not  Kelson,  then,  or  Socrates,  or  Newton,  or  any 
greater  name  of  saint  or  god,  but  myself,  endowed 
with  their  perfections.  Let  us  openly  avow  this  to 
our  souls ;  repeat  it  again  and  again  till  we  are  in  no 
danger  of  deceiving  ourselves  at  any  time  on  this 
subject.  Let  us  not  pretend  to  see  otherwise  than  our 
eyes  permit.  Let  us  wait  to  speak  impersonally  till 
we  have  passed  to  a  higher  plane  of  consciousness, 
that  shall  be  impersonal.  Let  us  boldly  paint  all  our 
ideal  pictures  with  the  lines  converging  with  "  refer- 
ence to  the  soul "  (p.  351)  for  me,  mine,  for  you,  yours. 


THE   PROBLEM   OF    EVIL.  43 

Such  is  the  substance  of  Whitman's  teaching.  Not 
only  is  all  knowledge  of  ours  subjective,  but  (clear  to 
the  eye  of  faith)  the  real  Object  is  identical  with  the 
real  Subject,  so  that  the  terms  u  I "  and  "  It,"  "  One's 
Self"  and  "  God  "  are  convertible. 

THE   PROBLEM   OF   EVIL. 

It  becomes  incumbent  on  us  now  to  investigate 
the  practical  corollaries  of  the  propositions  philosophic 
and  theological  which  we  have  hitherto  considered. 

It  is  with  some  hesitation  indeed  that  I  approach 
this  part  of  my  exposition,  as  it  will  be  far  less  easy 
than  elsewhere  to  make  Walt.  Whitman  speak  for 
himself,  and  in  speaking  for  him  there  is  liable  to 
enter  a  hardly  calculable  personal  factor.  All  the 
guidance  we  have  is  in  the  hypothesis  that  his  own 
unexpressed  view  reconciled  all  his  self-contradictions 
and  paradoxes.  For  is  there  not  in  the  very  tone  of 
the  already  quoted  lines,  "  Very  well,  then,  I  con- 
tradict myself,"  something  which  might  suggest  rather 
a  concession  for  argument's  sake  than  an  actual  plea 
of  guilty  to  any  charge  of  reckless  inconsistency?  If 
evil  is  declared  at  one  time  non-existent,  at  another 
time  part  of  the  Divine,  evil  must  bear  two  senses,  or 
we  should  have  to  conclude  that  the  Divine  itself  is 
non-existent.  The  tangle  is  by  no  means  easy  for  the 
reader  of  Whitman  to  ravel.  But  the  critic  is  obliged 
to  attempt  this.  We  might,  perhaps,  out  of  sheer 
despair,  have  set  the  whole  matter  of  morality  aside, 
as  we  do  with  Keats'  poetry,  were  it  not  that  Whit- 
man so  clearly  in  his  prose  arrogates  for  himself  a 
moral  purpose.  He  tells  us  that  "  all  great  art  must 
have  an  ethic  purpose."  (Pr.,  p.  188.)  To  be  sure, 


44  WALT   WHITMAN. 

he  warns  us  in  his  preface  of  1885  that  "the  greatest 
X  poet  does  not  moralize  or  make  applications  of  morals, 
he  knows  the  soul."  (Pr.,  p.  267.)  But  as  long  as 
Religion  and  Ethics  are  inseparable  (works  being  the 
fruit  of  a  living  flower  of  faith),  and  that  he  boldly 
claims  to  "  inaugurate  a  religion,"  one  can  not  evade 
the  question  altogether.  It  is  interesting  also  to  note 
by  the  way  Whitman's  criticism  of  J.  F.  Millet's 
picture,  which  may  have  suggested  to  Mr.  Havelock 
Ellis  his  helpful  comparison  of  Whitman  and  Millet.* 

Besides  this  masterpiece  ("  The  First  Sower  ")  there  were  many 
others,  (I  shall  never  forget  the  simple  evening  scene,  "  Watering 
the  Cow,"),  all  inimitable,  all  perfect  as  pictures,  works  of  mere 
art ;  and  then  it  seemed  to  me,  with  that  last  impalpable  ethic  pur- 
pose from  the  artist  (most  likely  unconscious  to  himself)  which  I 
am  always  looking  for.  (Pr.,  p.  181.) 

But  that  Whitman  was  not  indifferent  as  to  the 
moral  effect  of  his  work,  is  put  beyond  all  dispute  by 
the  note  to  his  Preface  of  1876,  a  paragraph  of  which 
shall  be  quoted : 

Since  I  have  been  ill  (1873-74-75),  mostly  without  serious 
pain,  and  with  plenty  of  time  and  frequent  inclination  to  judge 
my  poems  (never  composed  with  an  eye  on  the  book  market,  nor 
for  fame,  nor  for  any  pecuniary  profit),  I  have  felt  temporary  de- 
pression more  than  once,  for  fear  that  in  "  Leaves  of  Grass  "  the 
moral  parts  were  not  sufficiently  pronounced.  But  in  my  clearest 
and  calmest  moods  I  have  realized  that  as  those  "  Leaves,"  all 
and  several,  surely  prepare  a  way  for  and  necessitate  morals,  and 
are  adjusted  to  them,  just  the  same  as  nature  does  and  is,  they 
are  what,  consistently  with  my  plan  they  must  and  probably 
should  be.  (In  a  certain  sense,  while  the  Moral  is  the  purport 
and  last  intelligence  of  all  Nature,  there  is  absolutely  nothing  of 
the  moral  in  the  works,  or  laws,  or  shows  of  Nature.  Those  only 
lead  inevitably  to  it — begin  and  necessitate  it.)  (Pr.,  p.  284.) 

*  The  New  Spirit,  by  Havelock  Ellis.  Walter  Scott.  London, 
pages  104-107,  a  very  suggestive  little  volume  of  essays. 


THE   PROBLEM   OF   EVIL.  45 

According  to  Whitman's  own  judgment,  it  will 
be  impossible  to  extract  a  little  treatise  on  morals, 
and  difficult  to  obtain  a  systematic  solution  of 
problem  of  evil,  from  his  poems. 

There  are  those  who  nowadays  venture  to  claim 
that  without  evil  there  can  be  for  man  no  good. 
Therefore,  as  they  would  perpetuate  the  consciously 
moral  in  man,  they  find  themselves  obliged  to  con- 
template an  eternity  of  evil,  at  least  of  a  subjective 
sort.  There  must  always  remain  in  the  mind,  even 
should  it  pass  out  of  the  being,  that  which  is  different 
from  good,  if  there  is  to  be  consciousness  of  good ! 
There  must  always  remain  in  the  world  of  experience 
the  painful,  obstructive,  and  dangerous,  in  order  that 
there  may  be  opportunity  for  the  display  of  will ! 
To  this  view  Whitman  does  not  seem  to  accord  much 
sympathy.  I  suppose  he  would  have  argued  that  it 
was,  in  the  first  place,  not  at  all  necessary  that  we 
should  remain  consciously  moral. 

I  give  nothing  as  duties, 

What  others  give  as  duties,  I  give  as  living  impulses, 

(Shall  I  give  the  heart's  action  as  a  duty?)    (p.  190.) 

If  the  figure  is  to  be  taken  strictly,  he  would 
rather  have  morality  relegated  to  the  subconscious 
sphere  of  life.  Perfect  health  involves  oblivion  of  the 
body  as  a  functioning  organism.  The  soul,  when 
complete  in  ideal  efficiency,  knows  of  no  obligation, 
the  "  ought "  having  become  the  "  is."  For  any  thing 
that  looks  like  dualism,  we  have  a  sharp  reproof.  It 
is  puerile,  and  absurd : — 

Silent  and  amazed  even  when  a  little  boy, 
I  remember  I  heard  the  preacher  every  Sunday  put  God  in  his 
statements 


46  WALT   WHITMAN. 

As  contending  against  some  being  or  influence,     (p.  217.)* 

He  sets  down  his  disagreement  with  such  views 
as  I  have  occasionally  heard  ascribed  to  him  by  appa- 
rently conscientious  readers  of  "Leaves  of  Grass," 
and  which  have  been  stated  above. 

Koaming  in  thought  over  the  Universe,  I  saw  the  little  that  is 
good  steadily  hastening  toward  immortality, 

And  the  vast  all  that  is  called  Evil  I  saw  hastening  to  merge 
itself  and  become  lost  and  dead.    (p.  216.) 
Only  the  good  is  universal,    (p.  181.) 

Whitman  summarizes  with  evident  approval 
what  he  believes  to  be  the  views  of  Hegel  on  this 
subject : — 

The  specious,  the  unjust,  the  cruel,  and  what  is  called  the 
unnatural,  though  not  only  permitted  in  a  certain  sense  (like 
shade  to  light),  inevitable  in  the  divine  scheme,  are  by  the  whole 
constitution  of  that  scheme,  partial,  inconsistent,  temporary,  and 
though  having  ever  so  great  an  ostensible  majority,  are  certainly 
destined  to  failure,  after  causing  much  suffering.  (Pr.,  p.  176.) 

To  mere  "optimism,"  explaining  "only  the  sur- 
face and  fringe"  (Pr.,  p.  174),  he  has  no  leaning.  He 
desires  always  to  see  things  as  they  really  seem  to  the 
eye.  The  "  divine  cue,"  of  which  he  claims  a  "  soul 
sight,"  is  the  thought  that  "  the  whole  congeries  of 
things "  is  "  like  a  leashed  dog  in  the  hand  of  the 
hunter"  (Pr.,  p.  174);  "that  there  is  central  and  never 
broken  unity  "  and  one  "  consistent  and  eternal  pur- 
pose." (Pr.,  p.  176.)  The  notion  that  there  is  any 
thing  inherently  evil  or  foul  in  the  universe  seems 
to  him  "to  impugn  Creation"  (Pr.,  p.  306),  God 
"seeing  no  evil"  in  it.  (Cf.  Hab.  i,  13.)  When  he 
tells  us  that 


*(y.Pr.,p.270. 


THE    PROBLEM   OF   EVIL.  47 

The  difference  between  sin  and  goodness  is  no  delusion,  (p.  335.) 
he  must  doubtless  have  in  mind  a  conception  some- 
what akin  to  this  of  Browning : 

The  evil  is  null,  is  naught,  is  silence,  implying  sound ; 
What  was  good  shall  be  good,  with,  for  evil,  so  much  good  more. 

— (Abt.  Vogeler.  St.  IX,  1.  6.) 

Growth  from  good  to  better  is  quite  sufficient  to  al- 
low of  the  full  exercise  of  the  will.  Evil  thus  be- 
comes merely  the  name  of  a  good  that  has  been 
transcended. 

The  soul  is  always  beautiful,  it  appears  more  or  it  appears  less, 

it  comes  or  it  lags  behind,    (p.  331.) 
Nothing  out  of  its  place  is  good,  nothing  in  its  place  is  bad. 

-(p.  269.) 
The  universe  is  duly  in  order,  every  thing  is  in  its  place,    (p.  331.) 

By  this  is  meant,  then,  that,  while  in  the  universe 
absolute  law  and  order  obtains,  and  the  whole  there- 
fore is  good,  yet  the  individual  can  occupy  divers 
places  in  this  whole,  and  if  it  prefer  to  occupy  a 
lower  one  than  it  might  occupy,  embodied  as  it  now 
is,  it  is  bad  with  reference  to  its  possibilities — it  has 
yet  to  grow. 

The  fundamental  difficulty  about  this  evolution- 
ary conception  of  "  Evil "  as  propounded  by  some 
oriental  theosophies  would  seem  to  lie  in  the  postula- 
tion  of  a  universe  infinite  and  perfect,  giving  their 
strict  sense  to  these  words  infinite  and  perfect.  To 
speak  of  progress  with  reference  to  a  whole,  felt  to  be 
thus  infinite  and  perfect,  is  sufficiently  meaningless. 
And  if  the  whole  can  not  be  conceived  as  growing,  be- 
cause already  all  that  it  can  be,  and  yet  each  portion  of 
it  grows,  we  are  confronted  with  a  serious  problem  in- 
deed. One  solution  immediately  offers  itself,  which, 
while  it  would  serve  to  account  for  our  experiences 


48  WALT   WHITMAN. 

of  incorrigible  wrong-doing,*  is  hardly  satisfactory  to 
our  moral  or  aesthetic  sense,  namely : — that  retrogres- 
sion in  some  exactly  balances  progression  in  others, 
so  that  the  whole  remains  in  stable  equilibrium  per- 
petually self-identical.  But  the  thought  of  such  a 
universe  is  a  horrible  purposeless  swirl  and  monstrous 
unrest,  sickening  the  soul  with  the  very  prospect  of  its 
own  imperishable  existence.  And  then  to  tell  us,  by  way 
of  consolation,  as  some  would,  that  such  is  the  uni- 
verse, to  be  sure,  but  that  an  escape  is  provided  for  any 
soul  out  of  this  fiery  "  wheel  of  Nature"  f  upon  definite 
conditions  into  what  is  to  us  now  as  yet  nou -being ;  and 
that  though  souls  are  thus  constantly  passing  out, — be- 
coming "extinct,"  indeed,  so  far  as  such  poor  living  as 
this  can  be  dignified  by  the  name  of  life, — neverthe- 
less the  number  that  keep  up  the  universal  swirl  of 
being,  never  suffers  diminution  on  that  account,  be- 
cause originally  infinite ;  surely  this  were  only  to  pile 
paradox  on  paradox,  to  answer  a  question  by  a 
harder  question,  to  satisfy  the  spiritual  cravings  of 
man  at  the  expense  of  accurate  thinking. 

Perhaps  it  would  be  better  to  recognize  that 
thought  can  not  deal  with  what  has  avowedly  no  lim- 
its. The  zero  and  the  infinite  when  they  enter  our 
premises  vitiate  our  logic  hopelessly,  and  no  conclu- 
sion has  cogency.  Wherefore,  if  with  human  faculties 
even  a  picturesque  solution  of  the  mystery  of  existence 

*Cf.  Couds  without  water,  carried  along  by  winds;  autumn 
trees  without  fruit,  twice  dead,  plucked  up  by  the  roo^s ;  wild 
waves  of  the  sea,  foaming  out  their  own  shames;  wandering 
stars,  for  whom  is  reserved  the  blackness  of  darkness  forever. 
(St.  Jude  xii,  13.) 

tSt.  Jas.,  iii,  6. 


THE   PROBLEM   OP   EVIL.  49 

is  to  be  legitimately  obtained,  one  which  will  afford 
the  mind  a  rational  repose,  it  would  be  well  not  to 
render  at  the  very  atart  all  thought  impossible  by  the 
quite  gratuitous  assumption  that  we  are  dealing  with 
a  literary  "infinite"  and  therefore  "perfect"  or  "fin- 
ished" universe. 

Now,  it  would  scarcely  be  fair  to  Whitman  to  im- 
pute to  him  such  views.  It  suffices  him  to  assert 
that  the  universe  is  as  it  should  be,  and  is  good ;  that 
it  is  adapted  to  the  best  advantages  of  us  human 
souls  and  our  less  advanced  fellows  in  animal,  vege- 
table and  crystal.  The  universe  bafiles  our  intel- 
lectual, moral,  and  aesthetic  faculties  of  judgment. 
Therefore  we  say  it  is  infinite,  meaning  that  its  lim- 
its are  for  us  uudiscoverable ;  that  it  is  perfect,  mean- 
ing that  the  intensity  of  its  goodness  and  beauty  are 
beyond  our  sense  to  endure.  He  has  no  cast-iron 
theory  of  the  Cosmos.  He  regards  even  the  seas  and 
wind  as  "  too  big  for  formal  handling  "  (Pr.,  p.  95), 
and  therefore  as  improper  subjects  for  the  poet.  The 
"common  soil"  itself  (Pr.,  p.  100)  escapes  artistic 
grasp.  All  one  can  do  in  attempting  a  "  pen  and 
ink "  sketch  of  it,  is  to  enumerate  various  sensuous 
appeals  it  makes,  several  phases  of  its  appearance. 
On  this  account  the  "  demesne  of  poetry  will  always 
be  not  the  exterior  but  the  interior;"  not  the  ma- 
crocosm but  the  microcosm."  (Pr.,  p.  298.)  He 
"  leaves  all  free  "  (p.  190),  and  charges  his  disciples  to 
do  the  same. 

I  resist  any  thing  better  than  my  own  diversity, 
Breathe  the  air,  but  leave  plenty  after  me.     (p.  42.) 

So  far  as  he  can  see,  "  Evolution  "  will  explain 
every  thing.  He  does  not  feel  himself  bound  to 


50  WALT   WHITMAN. 

reckon  over  closely  with  what  is  beyond  his  sight, 
with  possible  "infinites"  and  "  eternities  "  of  an  ab- 
solute sort.  He  enjoys  Hegel's  glorious  philosophic 
tour-de-force,  but  he  would  be  the  last  to  pin  his  faith 
to  Hegel.  He  insists  on  "  leaving  room  ahead  of  him- 
self" (Pr.,  p.  266),  and  of  us,  on  what  he  calls  "keep- 
ing vista."  (p.  268.)  Hegel  after  all  is  no  more  than 
an  "  indispensable  "  contributor  to  the  "  erudition  of 
America's  future,"  but  hardly  worth  so  much  as  the 
messages  of  the  old  "  spiritual  poets  and  poetry  of 
other  lands."  (Pr.,  p.  177.)  "  Encompass  worlds, 
but  never  try  to  encompass  me  "  (p.  50),  would  be  his 
defiant  reply  to  urgent  invitations  of  any  officious 
spider  of  a  Metaphysician  to  come  into  his  gluey  net 
of  a  parlor,  besplangled  though  it  were  with  the  dews 
of  the  morning  all  asparkle  in  the  sun. 

But  it  will  save  space  if  I  set  forth  dogmatically, 
at  the  risk  of  a  little  repetition,  what  seems  to  be  the 
solution  of  the  moral  tangle  in  Whitman's  poetry. 
Dogmatism  is  always  a  capital  yoke-fellow  to  doubt ; 
it  is  usually  prudent  to  make  up  in  positiveness  for 
any  lack  of  definite  knowledge,  as  is  the  custom  with 
not  a  few ! 

The  word  Evil  is  used  by  Whitman  with  five  dis- 
tinct meanings : 

(1)  Evil  may  mean  the  less  good  as  compared  to 
the  good,  the  good  as  compared  to  better,  the  better 
as  compared  to  best.    In  this  sense  "  evil "  is  really 
"  good ;  "  different  in  degree  only,  not  in  kind. 

(2)  Evil  may  mean  a  supposed  not-good  ;  as  such 
its  existence  is  denied. 

Omnes !  Omnes !  Let  others  ignore  what  they  may, 

I  make  the  poem  of  evil  also,  I  commemorate  that  part  also, 


THE   PROBLEM    OF   EVIL.  51 

I  am  myself  just  as  much  evil  as  good,  and  my  nation  is — and  I 

say  there  is  in  fact  no  evil, 
(Or  if  there  is,  I  say  it  is  just  as  important  to  you,  to  the  land  or 

to  me,  as  any  thing  else.     (p.  22.) 

In  this  passage  we  clearly  see  the  first  two  mean- 
ings presented  together. 

(3)  Evil  may  mean  failure  to  develop  according 
to  the  "  inner  light"  (Pr.,  p.  465),  the  "  spiritual  divine 
faculty  "  (Pr.,  p.  284),  "  the  inward  Deity-planted  law  " 
(Pr.,  p.  465),  because  of  an  inadequate  realization  of 
one's  destiny. 

On  this  account,  Whitman  feels  he  has  con- 
tributed a  u  new  religion,"  and  makes  the  start  with 
the  "  divine  pride  "  in  one's  self. 

None  has  ever  yet  adored  and  worshiped  half  enough. 
None  has  begun  to  think  how  divine  he  himself  is  and  how  cer- 
tain the  future,     (p.  22.) 

Here  he  strengthens  the  soul  by  a  recognition  of 
absolute  law,  to  which  there  are  no  exceptions.  He 
ridicules  "  miracles "  in  that  sense.  Privileges,  too, 
he  will  have  for  none.  (p.  48.)  Therefore,  there  can 
be,  of  course,  no  substitutional  atonements,  no  forgive- 
ness. Remorseless  law,  expiation,  and  conversion  in 
the  strict  sense  of  "  turning  about,"  and  repentance  in 
the  sense  of  doing  better,  are  with  him  the  great 
pivotal  words  of  ethics.* 

A  careful  study  of  his  conception  of  "  sceptic  "  or 
"  infidel "  seems  to  give  the  word  the  sense  of  "  a 
man  who  does  not  believe  in  man  (c/*.,  p.  217),  and 
consequently  not  in  his  own  better  self ;  a  man  who 
opposes  the  champion  of  liberty,  political,  social,  per- 

*  These  pointe  will  be  substantiated  by  quotation  later  on  in 
this  paper. 


52  WALT  WHITMAN. 

sonal,  who  "  supposes  he  triumphs "  over  principles 
and  causes  by  crushing  those  who  maintain  and 
espouse  them,*  when  in  truth  he  is  crushing  himself 
in  them.  If  a  man  can  not  love  God  unless  he  love 
man  whom  he  hath  seen,  is  it  not  equally  true  that 
unless  a  man  believe  in  men,  he  never  can  believe  in 
God  ?  No  man  who  believes  in  man  is  an  infidel, 
however  much  he  may  think  himself  one.  His  em- 
phatic denials  are  but  perverse  affirmations. 

In  such  a  wondrous  world  as  this,  goodness  and 
faith  in  self  can  not  seem  strange  : 

Now  if  a  thousand  perfect  men  were  to  appear,  it  would  not 

amaze  me.    (p.  123.) 
The  wonder  is  always  and  always,  how  there  can  be  a  mean  man 

or  an  infidel,     (p.  47.) 

It  is  Whitman's  special  mission  to  "confound" 
wholly  the  "  skeptic  "  "with  the  hush  of  his  lips."  (p. 
50.)  And  surely  no  poet  has  held  up  to  the  man  who 
has  disbelieved  in  himself  a  more  terrible  "hand- 
mirror  "  than  he.  He  shows  the  "  infidel "  (i.  e.,  the  un- 
believer in  Whitman's  religion)  that  he  has  become  a 
slave — that  his  body  publishes  it  abroad — and  he  cries 
out  in  a  sympathetic  despair  for  the  man  : 

Such  a  result  so  soon,  and  from  such  a  beginning !    (p.  213.) 

I 

(4)  But  evil  may  not  mean  failure  to  develop 
courageously  from  within,  though  such  "  evil"  is  the 
only  evil  there  can  be  that  is  deplorable. 

The  true  poet  is  "  master  of  obedience."  (p.  273, 
cf.  Pr.,  p.  264.)  The  states  must  "  obey  little  "  and 
"resist  much."  (p.  15.)  Men  and  women  are  to 


*  Cf.  "  But  for  all  this  liberty,  has  not  some  out  of  place  nor 
the  infidel  entered  into  full  possession."    (p.  287.) 


THE    PROBLEM   OF   EVIL.  53 

"  think  lightly  of  the  laws"  as  such.  (p.  152.)  Whit- 
man goes  so  far  as  to  "  beat  the  gong  of  revolt."  (p. 
48.)  His  words  are  "reminders"  of  "life,"  "free- 
dom," "extrication."  (p.  48.)  He  is  "really" 
"  neither  for  nor  against  institutions  "  (p.  107),  but 
he  is  for  the  soul.  Now,  if  the  soul  did  not  refuse  to 
be  shaped  from  without,  it  could  never  develop  from 
within.  Rebellion  against  conventions,  laws,  de- 
corums, any  exterior  efforts  to  reform  or  improve, 
must  be.  It  is  perfectly  clear  that  if  the  "  Holy 
Spirit "  (interior  Energy)  is  to  work  according  to  its 
own  vital  individual  methods  in  the  world  of  uni- 
versal Law  (of  the  "Father"),  there  needs  to  be  in 
man  "  Satan,"  which  is  revolt  not  against  the  true 
"Father"  from  whom  the  "Holy  Spirit"  derives 
(who  dictates  to  the  individual  his  true  development 
in  perfect  harmony  with  his  world),  but  against  a  false 
"  Law  "  of  outside  imposition ;  against  also  that  very 
"  Father  "  misconceived  as  external  to  the  soul,  for 

The  soul  has  that  measureless  pride  which  revolts  from  every 
lesson  but  its  own.     (p.  291.) 

The  Savior  the  "mightier  God"  (p.  339),  the 
"  beautiful,  gentle  God  "  (p.  58),  the  "  beautiful  God 
the  Christ"  (p.  113),  is  he  who  manifested  as  sym- 
pathy and  love,  makes  men  aware  of  God  the  Holy 
Ghost,*  and  so  may  be  said  to  "  send  "  Him  to  them, 
who  in  his  turn  enlightening  them  "  leads  into  all 
truth,"  so  that  "Satan"  "falls  from  heaven,"  being 
no  longer  a  god  (i.  e.,  a  good)  to  man,  as  man  be- 

*Is  the  "Holy  Ghost"  or  "Inner  Light"  to  be  considered 
synonymous  with  "  Conscience  ?  "    (Cf.  Pr.,  pp.  284,  465.) 


54  WALT   WHITMAN. 

comes  "  one  with  the  Father  "  through  the  "  media- 
tion of  the  Son." 

Such  would  seem  to  be  the  meaning  of  the 
/  "  Square  Deific  "  (p.  339),  which  for  years  refused  to 
\  /  yield  up  its  secret,  because  I  was  unable  to  see  that 
with  Whitman  the  "  quaternary  "  that  takes  the  place 
of  the  orthodox  Christian  Trinity  represents  in  its 
manifoldness  a  process,  not  a  being.  The  true  God  is 
not  many,  but  One.  When  known  as  One  Being,  he 
is  known  as  Self,  and  all  differences  and  distinctions 
in  the  Deity  necessarily  efface  themselves  in  rapturous 
ecstasy.  If  this  doctrine,  novel  and  strange,  be  a  first 
installment  of  the  new  theology  (Pr.,  p.  278),  the  more 
splendid  theology  (Pr.,  p.  286)  which  according  to  Whit- 
man is  fast  coming,  there  are  those  who  will  feel 
somewhat  alarmed.  But,  for  their  comfort,  let  me 
state  that  Whitman  claims  no  infallible  popes,  coun- 
cils, or  churches  for  his  dogma.  He  thinks  the  "  New 
Theology "  will  not  be  "  settled "  quite  "  in  a  year 
nor  even  a  century !  "  (Pr.,  p.  286.) 

In  the  sense,  then,  of  "  Satan,"  evil  is  provision- 
ally good.  It  is  energy  turned  outward  in  self-defense, 
instead  of  being  engaged  at  its  normal  work  of  build- 
ing up  the  organism.* 

(5)  Evil  may  finally  mean  pain,  defeat,  age,  death, 
the  so-called  ills  which  "  flesh  is  heir  to." 

In  this  sense,  Whitman  denies  that  evil  is  to  be 
deplored.  Quotations  might  easily  be  multiplied  in- 
definitely. "The  soul  forever  and  forever"  (p.  21), 
and  it  would  seem  the  soul  is  never  more  distinctly 

*  Compare  with  the    "  Chanting   the    Square    Deific "    the 
"  Rounded  Catalogue  Divine  Complete."    (p.  419.) 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    EVIL.  55 

self-conscious  as  master,  than  when  it  is  confronted  by 
a  hostile  environment.  The  whole  of  heroism  and 
greatness  is  this  attitude  of  defiance  and  denial.  From 
the  "  Song  of  Joys,"  these  lines  are  to  the  point : 

O  to  struggle  against  great  odds,  to  meet  enemies  undaunted  ! 
To  be  entirely  alone  with  them,  to  find  how  much  one  can  stand! 
To  look  strife,  torture,  prison,  popular  odium,  face  to  face! 
To  mount  the  scaffold,  to  advance  to  the  muzzles  of  guns  with 

perfect  nonchalance ! 
To  be  indeed  a  God  !    (p.  148.) 

Defeat  is  as  glorious  as  victory.  The  true  guage  of 
success  is  soul -growth. 

"Battles  are  lost  in  the  same  spirit  in  which 
they  are  won."  (p.  43.)  All  "  overcome  heroes  "  are 
to  be  cheered  : 

Did  we  think  victory  great? 

So  it  is— but  now  it  seems  to  rue,  when  it  can  not  be  helped,  that 

defeat  is  great, 
And  that  death  and  dismay  are  great,     (p.  288.) 

Old  age  is  met  with  the  same  spirit : 

Sublime  old  age  of  manhood  or  womanhood, 
Old  age,  calm,  expanded,  broad  with  the  haughty  breadth  of  the 

universe, 
Old  age,  flowing  free  with  the  delicious  nearby  freedom  of  death. 

-(p.  126.) 

O  the  old  manhood  of  me,  my  noblest  joy  of  all ! 
My  children  and  grandchildren,  my  white  hair  and  beard, 
My  largeness,  calmness,  majesty  out  of  the  long  stretch  of  my 

life.     (p.  145.) 

Women  sit  or  move  to  and  fro,  some  old,  some  young, 
The  young  are  beautiful— but  the  old  are  more  beautiful  than  the 

young,     (p.  217.) 

No  poet  has  sung  old  age  more  sublimely ;  his  own  iu 
the  gem  entitled  "  Halcyon  Days  "  (p.  388) ;  old  age 
and  youth  contrasted  in  "  Youth,  Day,  Old  Age  and 
Night "  (p.  180) ;  the  old  man  in  st.  3.  of  "  I  sing  the 


56  WALT  WHITMAN. 

body  Electric."  (p.  82.)  "  The  ideal  woman  ;  prac- 
tical, spiritual,"  in  "As  at  thy  portals  also  death  "  (p. 
376)  ;  st.  11  of  "  Song  of  the  Broad  Axe  "  (p.  157) ;  in 
the  surpassingly  beautiful  st.  5  of  "  From  Noon  to 
Starry  Night."  (p.  355.)  Death  the  "  great  sea  "  to 
which  old  age  is  the  enlarging  "  estuary  "  "  grandly 
spreading  itself"  is  glorified,  (p.  218.) 

It  may  he  that  Walt  Whitman  has  not  treated 
this  theme  adequately.  Certainly  he  has  treated  it  as 
no  one  before  him.  There  is  nothing  of  Leopardi's 
courting  of  death  because  life  is  evil.  It  is  just  be- 
cause life  is  good  that  he  is  led  to  believe  "  death  " — 
the  unknown  life — still  better.  It  is  "just  as  lucky 
to  die  "  as  "  to  be  born."  (p.  34.)  "  What  will  be 
will  be  wall,  for  what  is  is  well."  (p.  335.)  Of  death 
as  immortality  it  is  not  yet  time  for  us  to  treat. 

If  now  pain,  defeat,  age,*death,  turn  out  to  be  no 
evils  at  all,  what,  then,  is  evil  ?  Let  us  summarize  the 
last  few  paragraphs  : 

Evil  (1)  =  the  less  good: — essentially  good ;  only  relatively  speak- 
ing not  good. 

(2)  =  the  not  good : — non-existent. 

(3)  =  failure  to  develop  from  within :  —the  lack  of  good. 

(4)  =  revolt  against  external  laws:— a  temporary  good. 

(5)  =  pain,  defeat,  old  age,  death :— opportunities  for  good, 

all  good. 

Of  these,  then,  the  only  evil  to  be  feared  is  the  third, 
and  that  is  the  want  of  good,  deficiency,  failure  to  de- 
velop latent  possibilities,  sloth  of  soul ;  all  which  is 
not  something  self-existent,  eternally  opposed  to  good. 

SALVATION    AND    THE   SAVIOR. 

The  quality  of  BEING  in  the  object's  self,  according  to  its  own 
central  idea  and  purpose,  and  of  growing  therefrom  and  thereto — 


SALVATION    AND    THE    SAVIOR.  57 

not  criticism  by  other  standards  and  adjustments  thereto — is  the 
lesson  of  Nature.     (Pr.,  p.  230.) 

It  is  in  this  thought  of  evolution  from  within, 
of  the  vital  guide  at  the  heart,  all  else  with  reference 
to  the  individual  thing  tending  to  assist  in  its  self- 
fulfillment,  that  Whitman  finds  his  moral  principle. 

The  whole  theory  of  the  universe  is  directed  unerringly  to  one 
single  individual — namely  to  You.  (p.  273.) 

All  parts  away  for  the  progress  of  souls,     (p.  127.) 

Evil  propels  me  and  reform  of  evil  propels  me,  I  stand  indiffer- 
ent, (p.  46.) 

I  have  no  mockings  or  arguments,  I  witness  and  wait.    (p.  32.) 

The  soul  is    ...    real, 

No  reasoning,  no  proof  has  established  it, 

Undeniable  growth  has  established  it.    (p.  180.) 

So  far  as  we  can  see,  growth  is  for  growth's 
sake, — for  growth  is  but  "  being  " — nor  can  we  push 
forward  to  a  farther  conception. 

Have  the  past  struggles  succeeded  ?    .    .    . 

Now  understand  me  well — it  is  provided  in  the  essence  of  things 
that  from  any  fruition  of  success,  no  matter  what,  shall 
come  forth  something  to  make  a  greater  struggle  necessary. 

-(p.  128.) 

I  said  to  my  spirit :  "  When  we  become  the  enfolders  of  those  orbs 
and  the  pleasure  and  knowledge  of  every  thing  in  them, 
shall  we  be  filled  and  satisfied  then  ?" 
And  my  spirit  said:    "No;   we  but  level  that  lift,  to  pass  and 

continue  beyond."     (p.  74.) 

The  law  of  promotion  and  transformation  can  not  be  eluded. 

-(p.  336.) 

If  you  want  a  substantial  conception  rather  than 
the  formal  one  of  "growth,"  he  will  suggest  as  syno- 
nym "  eternal  life."  Does  that  need  emotive  qualifi- 
cation? If  so,  he  can  afford  to  give  it  the  familiar 
name  "happiness."  (p.  78.)  For  to  him,  "the  efflux 
of  the  soul  is  happiness."  (p.  124.)  The  drift  of 


58  WALT   WHITMAN. 

things  is  indefinable — "it  is  grand"  and  "it  is  happi- 
ness." (p.  171.)  The  " core  of  life"  is  "happiness." 
(p.  300.)  Hence,  a  man  needs  to  wait  for  no  one  and 
no  thing  to  be  complete.  To  be  is  to  grow.  To  grow 
is  eternal  life.  Eternal  life  is  happiness. 

All  triumphs  and  glories  are  complete  in  themselves,  to  lead 
onward,  (p.  373.) 

No  stopping  place  is  thought  of — the  end  being 
beyond  thought.  Our  last  thought  is  progress  beyond 
thought.  From  this  we  can  readily  make  clear  to  our- 
selves why  Walt  Whitman  is  so  strong  in  his  rejec- 
tion of  asceticism.  Every  natural  function  is  pure 
and  good.  There  is  no  merit  in  mutilation.  The 
body  and  its  needs  are  to  be  reverenced  : 

I  believe  in  the  flesh  and  the  appetites,    (p.  49.) 

He  is  ambitious  in  his  writings  to 

permit  to  speak  at  every  hazard 
Nature  without  check,  with  original  energy,     (p.  29.) 

It  is  not  too  much  life  we  have,  but  too  little. 
Asceticism  were  the  proper  theory  if  any  part  of  us 
could  under  any  circumstances  be  overdeveloped. 
What  seems  overdevelopment  of  one,  is  really  under- 
development  of  some  other,  organ  or  function.  What 
we  need,  then,  is  not  repression,  but  right  stimulation. 

Not  that  Whitman  utterly  despises  ascetic  good- 
ness.* It  is  good,  no  doubt,  but  simply  not  the  best. 
It  is,  at  all  events,  narrow,  unbeautiful.  It  has  its  use 
as  the  method  for  exemplifying  singly,  certain  par- 
ticular perfections.  But  the  object  of  nature  is  the 
man  entire,  characterized,  like  the  poetry  of  the  Bible, 
by  "immense  sensuousness  immensely  spiritual."  (Pr. 


Note  his  appreciation  of  Whittier.     (Pr.,  pp.  181  and  481.) 


SALVATION   AND    THE    SAVIOR.  59 

p.  380.)  In  complete  accord  with  Obermann,  he  thinks 
this  result  will  be  attained  by  remembering  "that  our 
best  dependence  is  to  be  upon  humanity  itself,  and  its 
own  inherent,  normal,  full-grown  qualities,  without 
any  superstitious  support  whatever."  (Pr.,  p.  214.) 

How  such  a  result  is  to  be  attained  in  particular 
cases,  we  are  left  to  infer  for  ourselves.  We  have 
seen  he  recognizes  a  "  universal  will " — the  destiny  of 
any  and  every  individual  to  be  perfect.  That  "will" 
is,  of  course,  "  abysmic,"  and  enters  consciousness  as 
the  "conscience."  The  objects  of  conscience  are 
seized  upon  with  an  enthusiasm  which,  fortified  by  a 
cosmic  philosophy  of  indefinite  development  for  the 
individual,  is  a  Religion.  But,  so  far  as  we  can  tell, 
Religion  subserves  a  still  higher  end. 

Even  in  religious  fervor  there  is  a  touch  of  animal  heat.  But 
moral  conscientiousness,  crystalline,  without  flaw,  not  Godlike 
only,  entirely  human,  awes  and  enchants  forever.  Great  is  emo- 
tional love,  even  in  the  order  of  the  rational  universe.  But,  if  we 
must  make  gradations,  I  am  clear  there  is  something  greater. 
(Pr.,  p.  248.) 

How  this  object  is  to  be  attained — that  is,  how 
this  religious  fervor  is  to  be  kindled,  and  to  be  in  due 
time  transmuted  into  "something  greater"*  is  made 
fairly  evident.  Of  course,  you  can  not  probe,  preach, 
and  persecute  any  more.  If  you  did,  you  would  only 
arouse  "Satan"  in  a  man. 

Underneath  Christ  the  Divine  I  see, 

The  dear  love  of  man  for  his  comrade,    (p.  102.) 

Comerado  I  give  you  my  hand, 

I  give  you  my  love  more  precious  than  money, 

I  give  myself  before  preaching  or  law, 

Will  you  give  me  yourself  ?    Will  you  come  travel  with  me  ? 

-(p.  129.) 


*  Emerson's  "  Celestial  Love  ?  " 


60  WALT   WHITMAN. 

An  invitation  of  this  sort  can  be  accepted  by  the 
proudest  soul. 

Behold  I  do  not  give  lectures  or  a  little  charity, 
When  I  give,  I  give  myself,     (p.  66.) 

Whoever  walks  a  furlong  without  sympathy,  walks  to  his  own 
funeral  drest  in  his  shroud,  (p.  76.) 

And  with  Whitman  this  is  not  mere  highsound- 
ing  hyperbole.  Lack  of  sympathy  argues  that  you 
have  fallen  from  a  consciousness  of  that  Self,  which  is 
also  your  neighbor's. 

I  do  not  ask  the  wounded  person  how  he  feels,  I  myself  become 

the  wounded  person. 
My  hurts  turn  livid  upon  me  as  I  lean  on  a  cane  and  observe. 

-(p.  60.) 

If  he  finds  you  depressed  he  will  infuse  in  you 

The  joy  of  that  vast  elemental  sympathy  which  only  the  human 
soul  is  capable  of  generating  and  emitting  in  steady  and 
limitless  floods,  (p.  143.) 

He  knows  his  own  incompleteness.  It  is  relatively 
just  as  great  as  that  of  the  lowest  men. 

I  feel  I  am  of  them — I  belong  to  those  convicts  and  prostitutes 
myself, 

And  henceforth  I  will  not  deny  them — for  how  can  I  deny  my- 
self? (p.  299.) 

Does  he  meet  them,  his  eye,  his  gesture,  his 
mouth  will  reassure  them  : 

Not  till  the  sun  excludes  you  do  I  exclude  you. 

Not  till  the  waters  refuse  to  glisten  for  you,  and  the  leaves  to 

rustle  for  you,  do  my  words  refuse  to  glisten  and  rustle  for 

you.    (p.  299.) 

Indeed  he  will  keep  his  promise  and  break  forth 
into  his  glorious  hymn,  "  To  You."  (p.  186.) 

Your  true  soul  and  body  appear  before  me.    .    .    . 
None  has  understood  you,  but  I  understand  you, 


SALVATION   AND   THE   SAVIOUR.  61 

None  has  done  justice  to  you,  you  have  not  done  justice  to  your 

self, 
None  but  has  found  you  imperfect,  I  only  find  no  imperfection 

in  you, 
None  but  would  subordinate  you,  I  only  am  he  who  will  never 

consent  to  subordinate  you. 
I  only  am  he  who  places  over  you  no  master,  owner,  better,  God, 

beyond  what  waits  intrinsically  in  yourself.     .    .    . 
You  have  not  known  what  you  are,  you  have  slumbered  upon 

yourself  all  your  life.    .    .    . 
The  mockeries  are  not  you. 

Underneath  them  and  within  them  I  see  you  lurk,    .     .     . 
If  these  conceal  you  from  others  they  do  not  conceal  you  from 

me.    .    .    . 
Whoever  you  are,  claim  your  own  at  every  hazard,    (p.  186-187.) 

This  is  the  "  new  religion,"  the  "  greater  re- 
ligion," which  yet  is  not  new.  Behind  our  most  mod- 
ern philosophy  and  art  is  "  the  same  old  heart  and 
brain;"  the  "insight  and  inspiration  of  the  same  old 
humanity."  The  "physiognomy"  alone  can  change, 
thinks  Whitman.  (Cf.  Pr.,  p.  335.) 

However,  it  is  frankly  as  "Poet"  that  he  sees 
the  "  Saviour."  In  literature  is  to  be  the  soul  of 
democracy.  It  is  to  be  a  general  consciousness.  (Cf. 
Pr.,  p.  247.)  "  The  Song  of  the  Answerer,"  "  By  Blue 
Ontario's  Shore,"  and  "  Democratic  Vistas  "  have  this 
thought  for  burden ;  and  Whitman  would  contend  that 
after  all  this  notion  is  confirmed  by  the  history  of  the 
greatest  teacher  of  antiquity  and  the  nature  of  his  influ- 
ence to-day.  In  the  simple  home  it  is  Jesus  the  Poet, 
the  maker  of  certain  beautiful  parables,  who  influences 
for  good.  It  is  his  life,  itself  the  poem  of  poems, 
which,  apart  from  all  theories  about  his  person  and 
his  work,  touches  the  souls  of  men,  and  infilters  itself 
into  their  lives.  Of  course  by  "  literature  "  we  know 


62  WALT   WHITMAN. 

just  what  Whitman  means.  For  him  the  poet  is  a 
•'free  channel  of  himself,"  (Pr.,  p.  268),  giving 
"  things  without  increase  or  diminution."  "  He  takes 
his  data  from  science.  (Cf.  Pr.,  p.  269.)  His  manner 
is  characterized  by  an  "  absence  of  tricks."  (Pr.,  p. 
272.)  His  subject  is  "not  nature,  but  man."  (Pr.,p.298.) 
He  has  the  "  rapt  vision  "  to  which  the  "  seen  becomes 
the  prophecy  of  the  unseen  "  (Pr.,  p.  299) ;  he  is  the 
complete  lover  of  the  universe,"  "  leaving  room  ahead 
of  himself"  (Pr.,  p.  266),  and  he  treats  even  the 
universal  from  no  fictitious  point  of  view,  but  from 
that  which  he  actually  occupies.  (Pr.,  p.  229.)  He 
himself  illustrates  his  doctrine  for  he  is 

The  glory  and  extract  thus  far  of  things  and  of   the  human 
race.    (p.  137.) 

"  Leaves  of  Grass  "  also,  since  "  personal  force  is 
behind  every  thing  "  (p.  435),  presents  us  a  "Person;" 
(p.  438)  and  so,  for  the  true  "Answerer  "  "  the  Maker 
of  poems,"  who  "  settles  justice,  reality,  immortality  " 
(p.  137),  he  "gives  us  himself"  after  all  (p.  66),  having, 
as  he  admits,  unconsciously  taken  upon  himself  to  be 
an  Answerer. 

IMMORTALITY. 

Let  us  now  turn  our  attention  to  the  doctrine  of  im- 
mortality as  it  was  conceived  by  Walt  Whitman.  In 
this  region  especially  are  his  theological  exotics  exuber- 
ant. His  doctrine  of  the  divine  Self  has  a  latent  strain 
of  oriental  mysticism.  In  his  dealing,  however,  with 
life,  death,  and  immortality — the  progress  of  that 
divine  Self  beyond  these  known  conditions — he  orien- 
talizes, if  possible,  yet  more  decidedly.  And  as  he 
laid  great  stress  on  "  what "  a  man  or  a  nation  "  thinks 


IMMORTALITY.  63 

of  death "  because  in  his  opinion  the  "  idea  of  im- 
mortality, above  all  other  ideas,"  is  to  "  give  crown- 
ing religious  stamp  to  democracy  in  the  new  world  " 
(Pr.,  p.  281),  it  is  incumbent  upon  every  sympathetic 
student  to  ascertain  just  what  Whitman  himself 
thought  likely  to  be  the  form  of  the  doctrine  suited 
to  modern  times.  Here,  too,  I  conceive,  it  is  not  my 
duty  to  criticise  but  to  present.  Strictures  are  al- 
ways an  inviting  field  for  the  flying  of  rhetorical 
kites.  All  you  can  learn  from  them,  though,  is  how 
the  wind  of  prejudice  is  blowing  for  him  who  holds 
the  strings.  I  venture  to  think  a  painstaking 
mosaic  of  "Whitman's  chief  utterances  will  serve  the 
reader  better  than  some  gratuitous  observations  of  the 
present  writer  on  the  damnable  wickedness  of  heresy  ! 
Let  it  be  clearly  understood,  however,  that  there 
is  nothing  willful  and  capricious  in  Whitman's  adop- 
tion of  views  on  these  subjects  unusual  to  us  of  the 
West.  Indeed,  his  doctrines,*  though  often  undoubt- 
edly coincident  with  oriental  theories  are  developed 
for  very  different  reasons.  They  originate  with  him  in 
his  passion  for  an  ideal  democracy,  an  ultimate  divine 
City  of  Friends,  where  there  will  be  no  occasion  for 
the  preference  of  one  to  another,  because  all  are  pos- 
sitively  equal. 

Much  as  Whitman  believes  in  "love"  he  never 
could  adopt  it  as  a  provisional  solution  of  the  prob- 
lem of  divine  justice.  He  never  cared  to  believe  that 
"stars  differ  from  one  another  in  glory."  (1  Cor. 

*  See  footnote  of  this  essay  at  the  end  of  Section  8  (p.  314)  for 
corroborative  evidence  on  Whitman's  independent  development 
of  those  ideas  concerning  which  the  suspicion  of  direct  deriva- 
tion from  oriental  theosophies  is  most  plausible. 


64  WALT   WHITMAN. 

xv,  41.)  Such  a  doctrine  seemed  to  him  a  projection 
of  arbitrary  social  distinction  into  the  sphere  of  eter- 
nity. He  could  not  believe  in  a  cosmic  partiality. 
All  must  have  had  the  same  beginning.  All  must  end 
in  the  same  perfection.  The  different  degrees  of 
natural  endowment  can  not  of  course  be  chance ;  if 
they  can  not  be  ascribed  to  divine  caprice,  after  the 
Calvinistic  fashion,  there  is  only  room  left  for  the 
thought  that  the  physical  and  spiritual  capital  with 
which  we  start  here  is  what  we  have  earned  according 
to  universal  law  in  an  eternal  pre-existence.  The 
differences  to  us,  which  make  the  doctrine  of  "  equal- 
ity "  incredible,  and  that  of  "  fraternity "  therefore 
difficult  of  reduction  to  practice,  are  only  a  matter  of 
relative  speed.  God  fixes  the  beginning  and  the 
end — nay,  is  the  beginning  arid  the  end.  He  gives  us 
indefinite  time,  and  leaves  us  free  to  choose  our 
route.  We  can  travel  in  a  straight  line,  or  in  vast 
spirals,  or  in  fantastic  loops  and  labyrinthine  tangles. 
But  the  end,  "the  seed  perfection,"  was  within  the 
"  first  huge  nothing  "  (p.  71),  and  is  to  the  open  spir- 
itual eye  so  distinctly  visible  as  to  make  even  now  the 
democratic  faith  a  beautiful  certainty. 

The  thought  of  the  family  in  which  each  rejoices 
that  he  is  really  surpassed  by  some  brother  or  sister  ; 
the  delight  of  self-subordination  to  those  we  love ; 
the  keen  selfless  enjoyment,  in  sympathy,  of  the 
greatness  that  is  greater  than  any  we  shall  ever  at- 
tain ;  the  delicious  attribution  of  our  greatness  to 
those  less  great,  not  as  ours,  but  as  a  revelation  of 
His  who  is  their  Father  and  ours ;  a  communion  of 
reciprocal  aspiration  and  inspiration  up  a  vast  stair- 
way of  grades  of  being,  one  current  of  holy  Love, 


IMMORTALITY.  65 

and  beatific  selflessness  running  up  and  down  the 
chain  of  joined  hands  :  (God  Himself  the  unity  of 
this  eternal  diversity — the  white  light  in  which  the 
several  rays  are  absorbed,  lost  to  vision,  though  still 
continuous  distinct  elements  of  its  manifold  whole)  : 
such  symbol  ideas  of  the  life  beyond  were  apparently 
incompatible  with  a  thorough  belief  in  democracy, 
according  to  Whitman.  It  was  not  for  their  strange- 
ness' sake  that  he  suggests  a  Swedenborgian  spiritual 
body,  a  Hindu  metempsychosis,  and  hints  a  resolution 
of  all  inequality  in  a  "  One  formed  out  of  all,"  (p.  21) 
making  the  "  vast  similitude  "  the  night  creates  to 
the  eye  (cf.  p.  207)  or  sleep  to  the  mind,  significant  of 
the  "  Truth :" 

The  antipodes,  and  every  one  between  this  and  them  in  the  dark, 

I  swear  they  are  averaged  now — one  is  no  better  than  the  other, 

The  night  and  sleep  have  likened  them  and  restwed  them. 

I  swear  they  are  beautiful, 

Every  one  that  sleeps  is  beautiful,  every  thing  in  the  dim  light  is 

beautiful, 

The  wildest  and  bloodiest  is  over,  and  all  is  peace. 
Peace  is  always  beautiful, 
The  myth  of  heaven  indicates  peace  and  Night,    (pp.  330-1.) 

Not,  thus,  as  hitherto  customary  among  us,  the 
day,  that  distinguishes,  but  the  night  that  charitably 
and,  one  might  say,  unmorally  covers  all  disparities, 
and  fuses  in  one  tranquil  mystery  all  that  is,  serves 
Whitman  as  symbol  of  his  ultimate  Ideal.  (Cf.  Pr., 
pp.  101, 119, 126;  L.  of  G.  344,  369.) 

There  never  could  have  been  in  Whitman  any 
love  of  exotics  as  such. 

Have  you  not  imported  this  or  the  spirit  of  it  in  some  ship  ?  (p.  271) 
is  one  of  his  searching  questions  to  the  would-be  poet 
of  America.  For  the  poet  must  be  original ;  singers  and 


66  WALT   WHITMAN. 

rhymers  as  he  calls  them,  amused  with  "  a  prettiness," 
are  not  under  obligation  to  create.  (Cf.  p.  272.)  But  in 
the  poet's  work  every  thing  must  be  native  ;  and  the 
more  one  ponders  over  the  doctrines  of  apparently  ori- 
ental origin,  the  more  one  is  convinced  they  are  with 
Whitman  developed  from  within.  Transcendental  sen- 
timents consistent  with  a  "  divine  democracy "  took 
speculative  formal  elements  from  such  eastern  doc- 
trines as  were  suited  for  wholesome  and  complete 
assimilation  by  them ;  and  with  Whitman  these  senti- 
ments were  never  allowed  to  forget  their  immediate 
origin: — an  unreasoned  faith  in  the  unqualified  equal- 
ity and  fraternity  of  man.* 

See  ever  so  far,  there  is  limitless  space  outside  of  that, 

Count  ever  so  much,  there  is  limitless  time  around  that.     (p.  73.) 

Now  when  the  soul  is  at  its  highest  vital  pitch  it 
declares  confidently : 

I  know  I  have  the  best  of  time  and  space,  and  was  never  meas- 
ured, and  never  will  be  measured,  (p.  73.) 

I  know  I  am  deathless, 

I  know  this  orbit  of  mine  can  not  be  swept  by  a  carpenter's  com- 
pass, 


*  Democracy  is  to  Whitman  so  wonderful,  because  it  is,  as  he 
conceives  it,  the  method  of  Nature.  (Pr.,  pp.  68-69.)  It  individ- 
ualizes and  universalizes.  (Pr.,  p.  220.)  The  individualization  is 
the  source  itself  of  sympathy,  as  a  clear  self-knowledge  implies  a 
knowledge  of  others.  Sympathy  universalizes.  This  sympathy 
or  love  he  terms  adhesiveness.  (Pr.,  foot-note,  p.  247.)  Poetry  is 
to  be  the  Soul  of  democracy  (Pr.,  p.  247),  in  that  it  is  to  individ- 
ualize men,  bring  them  to  self-knowledge.  It  is  to  be  the  vehicle 
of  religion.  (Pr.,  pp.  222,  279.)  For  an  understanding  of  his 
views  on  the  essence  of  democracy  perhaps  the  shortest  helpful 
essay  is  his  "  Carlyle  from  an  American  point  of  view."  (Pr.,  pp. 
170-178.)  The  three  prefaces  and  "Democratic  Vistas"  should 
be  read  if  possible. 


IMMORTALITY.  67 

I  know  I  shall  not  pass  like  a  child's  carlacue  cut  with  a  burnt 
stick  at  night, 

I  laugh  at  what  you  call  dissolution, 

And  I  know  the  amplitude  of  time.    (p.  45.) 

He  is  not  of  those  who  assert  that  it  makes  no 
difference  whether  or  not  there  be  any  outlook  beyond 
the  laying  down  of  the  body: — 

Is  to-day  nothing?  is  the  beginningless  past  nothing? 

If  the  future  is  nothing  they  are  just  as  surely  nothing,    (p.  333.) 

The  future  is  no  more  uncertain  than  the  present,     (p.  151.) 

Do  you  suspect  death  ?    If  I  were  to  suspect  death  I  should  die 

now, 

Do  you  think  I  could  walk  pleasantly  and  well  suited  toward  an- 
nihilation? (p.  337.) 

But  the  fact  is  he  does  "  walk  pleasantly  and  well 
suited ;"  and  though  he  can  not  cogently  reason  out  to 
a  satisfactory  conclusion,  he  sees  in  the  facts  an  imma- 
nent assurance : 

I  do  not  doubt  that  whatever  can  possibly  happen  is  provided  for 
in  the  inherences  of  things,  (p.  342.) 

Did  you  think  Life  was  so  well  provided  for,  and  Death,  the  pur- 
port of  all  Life,  is  not  well  provided  for?  (p.  342.) 

For,  apparently,  life  is  for  death : 

What  invigorates  life  invigorates  death ;  (p.  151.) 
so  much  so  that 

Life,  life  is  the  tillage,  and  Death  is  the  harvest  according. 

-(p.  346.) 

A  thing  is  never  understood  but  in  relation  to  its 
origin  and  end.  The  mystery  of  life  is  not  without 

reason : 

0 !  I  see  now  that  life  can  not  exhibit  all  to  me,  as  the  day  can  not, 
I  see  that  I  am  to  wait  for  what  will  be  explained  by  death. 

-(p.  345.) 

The  question  "  what  is  life?"  involves  the  question 


68  WALT   WHITMAN. 

"what  is  death?"  The  thought  that  they  are  one, 
while  it  gives  us  no  clearer  understanding  of  life, 
leaves  the  soul  at  all  events  satisfied.  "We  have  seen 
about  us  the  wonderful  play  of  life.  Every  spring 
from  "  dead  clods  and  chills  as  from  low  burial  graves," 
a  "  thousand  forms  "  rise.  "  Bloom  and  growth  "  im- 
ply materials,  (p.  399.)  In  decay  Whitman  smells 
"  the  white  roses  sweet  and  scented "  and  reaches  to 
"leafy  lips"  and  "to  the  polished  breasts  of  melons." 
(p.  77.)  "  What  chemistry !"  he  cries,  considering 
"that  all  is  clean  forever  and  forever,"  and  an  ecstasy 
fills  him  when  he  realizes  that  the  earth  which 

Gives  such  divine  materials  to  men,  and  accepts  such  leavings  at 

last, 
Grows  such  sweet  things  out  of  such  corruptions, 

and  in  spite  of  all  attempts  to  pollute,  "turns  harm- 
less and  stainless  on  its  axis."  (pp.  286-7.) 

£Tow,  a  consideration  of  the  destiny  of  man  in  the 
"  light  of  the  processes  wherein  "  life  "  seems  "  the 
leaving  of  many  deaths  "  would  lead  us  up  to  a 
doctrine  like  that  of  George  Eliot's  '  Choir  In- 
visible.' '  But  although  (with  Whitman),  we  may 
believe  this  to  be  a  doctrine  of  immortality  entirely 
true  so  far  as  it  goes,  nothing  prevents  us  (with 
Whitman  also)  going  beyond  it  to  further  assertions 
of  the  perpetuation  of  spiritual  being,  if  we  are  not 
yet  reconciled  to  death,  when  told  that  life  is  a  con- 
tinual dying.  We  may  admit  that  the  earth  is  falling 
to  the  sun  every  moment  while  aware  that  she  is  not 
arriving  at  her  destination  very  fast.  Similarly  the 
bird  is  sinking  earthward,  but  the  libration  of  his 
wings  is  at  the  same  time  lifting  him  heavenward, 
and  so  he  soars  on  quietly  in  the  blue  serene. 


IMMORTALITY.  69 

0  living  always,  always  dying ! 

O  the  burials  of  me  past  and  present, 

O  me  while  I  stride  ahead,  material,  visible  as  ever. 

-(p.  344.) 

That  is  just  it.  Our  life  is  a  delicate  balance  in 
favor  of  the  organism  between  constructive  energies 
and  destructive  forces.  Face  to  face  with  death,  in- 
deed, the  horrible  doubt  comes  : 

Matter  is  conqueror — matter  triumphant,  continues  forever. 

—(p.  341.) 

Are  souls  drowned  and  destroyed  so  ? 
Is  only  matter  triumphant?    (p.  345.) 

But  as  a  loyal  Positivist  you  cry  "  No  ! "  Soul 
triumphs  as  fully  as  matter.  No  form  of  matter 
abides.  No  form  of  soul  does  either.  A  spiritual 
chemistry  analogous  to  that  of  the  physical  world 
actually  perpetuates  all  that  is  precious, 

And  nothing  endures  but  personal  qualities,    (p.  152.) 
If  all  come  to  ashes  of  dung, 

If  maggots  and  rats  ended  us,  then  Alarum !  for  we  are  betrayed. 

-(p.  337.) 

You  may  say  that  the  martyrs  live. 

They  live  in  other  young  men,  0  Kings, 
They  live  in  brothers  again  to  defy  you, 
They  were  purified  by  death,  they  were  taught  and  exalted. 

-(p.  212.) 

Doubtless  this  is  perfectly  reasonable.  It  is  a 
matter  besides  not  of  speculation  but  of  experience, 
and,  as  shown  by  the  quotations,  Whitman  heartily 
agrees  with  all  this.  Not  by  the  elimination  of  the 
spiritually  weak  (as  unfit  to  survive),  but  rather  by  the 
elimination  of  the  spiritually  strong  (as  needing  no 
longer  to  survive),  is  virtue  in  this  world  increased. 
For  every  one  true  man  slain  two  arise  in  his  place. 


70  WALT   WHITMAN. 

Propagation  of  spiritual  qualities  is  not  by  physical 
inheritance,  but  by  moral  inoculation.     So  is 

The  loftiest  of  life  upheld  by  death,     (p.  366.) 
It  is  a  noble  thing  to  sing  the  song  of  the  old 
California  trees : 

Nor  yield  we  mournfully,  majestic  brothers, 

We  who  have  grandly  filled  our  time ; 

With  Nature's  calm  content,  with  tacit  huge  delight, 

We  welcome  what  we  wrought  for  through  the  past, 

And  leave  the  field  for  them. 

For  them  predicted  long, 

For  a  superber  race,  they  too  to  fill  their  time, 

For  them  we  abdicate,  in  them  ourselves  ye  forest  kings ! 

-(p.  166-7.) 

PERSONAL   IDENTITY. 

But  true  as  all  this  doubtless  is,  it  is  hard  to  be- 
lieve that  u  personal  qualities "  can  only  be  trans- 
ferred as  flame  from  torch  to  torch. 

"I  swear  nothing  is  good  to  me  that  ignores 
individuals."  (p.  341.)  And  this  sort  of  "  qualitative 
immortality  "  does  absolutely  ignore  the  individual. 

"  Only  what  satisfies  souls  is  true."  (p.  201.) 
This  Comtist  doctrine  in  and  of  itself  can  not  sat- 
isfy the  soul.  We  do  not  believe  we  are  "  qualities  " 
merely.  We  know  we  are  substance;  whatever  that 
may  be,  it  is  what  we  are.  If  we  were  conscious  of 
ourselves  as  "  mere  qualities  "  undoubtedly  the  propa- 
gation of  them  would  be  the  continuance  of  our  con- 
scious life.  Whitman,  thinking  of  the  past  history 
of  the  race,  asks  significantly  : 

Are  those  billions  of  men  really  gone  ? 

Are  those  women  of  the  old  experience  of  the  earth  gone  ? 

Do  their  lives,  cities,  arts,  rest  only  with  us  f 

Did  they  achieve  nothing  for  good  for  themselves  f 


PERSONAL    IDENTITY.  71 

I  believe  all  those  men  and  women    .    .    .    every  one  exists,  etc. 

—(p.  289.) 

What  do  you  think  has  become  of  the  young  and  old  men  ? 
And  what  do  you  thiuk  has  become  of  the  women  and  children  ? 
They  are  alive  and  well  somewhere, 
The  smallest  sprout  shows  there  is  really  no  death, 
And  if  ever  there  was  it  led  forward  life,  and  does  not  wait  at  the 

end  to  arrest  it, 

And  ceased  the  moment  life  appeared. 
All  goes  onward  and  onward,  nothing  collapses, 
And  to  die  is  different  from  what  any  one  supposed  and  luckier. 

-(p.  34.) 

"  In  fact  I  know  I  am  deathless"  (p.  44)  in  an 
individual  way. 

There  is  that  in  me — I  do  not  know  what  it  is — but  I  know  it  is 

in  me.    .    .    . 

I  do  not  know  it — it  is  without  name.    .    .    . 
It  is  not  chaos  or  death— it  is  form,  union,  plan — 
It  is  eternal  life— it  is  Happiness,     (pp.  77-78.) 

Then,  too,  when  "  I  plead  "  in  my  heart  with  the 
universe  "  for  my  brothers  and  sisters  "  (p.  78)  I  can 
not  but  remember  "  the  young  man  "  and  "the  young 
woman  put  by  his  side" — their  lives  only  a  beau- 
tiful morning ;  "  the  little  child  that  peeped  in  at 
the  door,  and  then  drew  back  and  was  never  seen 
again"— a  mere  false  start;  "the  old  man  who 
has  lived  without  purpose,"  and  now  that  it  is  too 
late,  has  become  aware  of  it,  "  and  feels  it  with  bit- 
terness worse  than  gall ;"  there  are  the  diseased, 
the  degraded,  those  still  half-brutish,  those  that  are 
"  sacs  merely  floating  with  open  mouths  for  food  to 
slip  in."  (p.  70.)  For  these  he  perceives  that  life  as 
we  know  it  does  not  provide ;  they  can  not  be  over- 
looked in  the  universal  providence;  that  something 
which  provides  for  them  is  again  Life.  Only  Life  can 


72  WALT   WHITMAN. 

complete  life.  Of  this  Life,  "  this  heavenly  mansion," 
death  is  "the  opener  and  usher"  (p.  213),  to  it  death 
is  "  the  exquisite  transition."  (p.  373.)  Love  teaches 
this  lesson : 

Death,  death,  death,  death,  death!     (p.  201.) 
and  the   "  vast  heart,   like  a  planet's    chained  and 
chaffing"   of   the  moonlit  sea — telling  its   "tale  of 
cosmic  elemental  passion"  (p.  392)  utters  also  : 

The  word  of  the  sweetest  song  and  all  songs, 
That  strong  and  delicious  word.     .    .    .     (p.  201.) 

But  not  in  grief  only  is  this  felt  to   be  love's 
natural  lesson : 

For  how  calm,  how  solemn  it  grows  to  ascend  to  the  atmosphere 

of  lovers. 

Death  or  life — I  am  then  indifferent,  my  soul  declines  to  prefer. 
(I  am  not  sure  but  the  high  soul  of  lovers  welcomes  death  most.) 

-(p.  96.) 

.    .     .    You  are  folded  inseparably,  you,  love  and  death  are. 
Nor  will  I  allow  you  to  balk  me  any  more  with  what  I  was  calling 

life, 

For  now  it  is  conveyed  to  me  that  you  are  the  purports  essential, 
That  you  abide  in  those  shifting  forms  of  life,  for  reasons,  and 

that  they  are  mainly  for  you, 
That  you  beyond  them  come  forth  to  remain  the  real  reality. 

-(p.  97.) 

The  great  intellectual  insights  into  life,  as  loudly 
and  clearly  as  love  does,  speak  of  death. 

I  foresee  too  much,  it  means  more  than  I  thought, 
It  appears  to  me  I  am  dying,     (p.  381.) 

Indeed,  "  Fancy,"  to  which  at  death  the  poet  says 
farewell,  may  be  but  another  name  for  it. 

May  be  it  is  yourself  now  really  ushering  me  to  the  true  songs. 

-(p.  422.) 

therefore,  "  retaining "   his  "  heart's   and  soul's  un- 


PERSONAL    IDENTITY.  73 

mitigated  faith"  up  "to  the  last"  (Pr.,  p.  520)  the 
dying  poet  cries  : 

Good-bye— and  hail !  my  Fancy !     (p.  422.) 

It  is  not  mere  despair  of  this  life ;  it  is  life  at  its 
height  that  promises  continuance  and  completion.  It 
is  sympathy,  love,  it  is  transcendent  moments  of  vital 
vision,  it  is  flashes  of  spiritual  illumination,  it  is  this 
all  which  urges  the  soul  to  say  deliberately  aloud : 

I  do  not  think  life  provides  for  all,  and  for  time  and  space,  but  I 
believe  Heavenly  Death  provides  for  all.     (p.  342.) 

Death  of  earth  is  birth  of  heaven.  How  does  the 
soul  know  this  ?  How  can  you  be  sure  you  should 
call  it  "  heavenly  ?  "  May  it  not  indeed  be  "  hellish  ?  " 
If  justice  is  not  fully  shown  us  here  and  now,  may 
not  a  monster  Injustice,  naked,  bloodsmeared,  eyes 
lurid  in  the  dark — savage  tooth  and  claw  eager  to 
rend  us — hold  despotic  sway  in  those  realms  un- 
known ?  To  this  Whitman  can  only  answer  that  he 
has  not  found  a  lack  of  justice  here.  "  "What  is  "  is 
well  with  reference  to  what  was.  "  What  will  be 
will  be  well "  therefore  with  reference  to  "  what  is." 
(p.  335.)  "  The  law  of  promotion  and  transformation 
can  not  be  eluded."  (p.  336.)  There  is  no  evil  at  all 
in  this  our  experience  of  life  but  what  amounts  to  a 
"  lagging  i11  the  race,"  and  that  will  be  set  right  by 
indefinite  time. 

I  do  not  know  what  is  untried  and  afterward, 

But  I  know  it  will  in  its  turn  prove  sufficient  and  can  not  fail. 

-(p.  70.) 

Whither  I  walk  I  can  not  define,  but  I  know  it  is  good, 
The  whole  universe  indicates  that  it  is  good, 
The  past  and  the  present  indicate  that  it  is  good.    (p.  337.) 


74  WALT   WHITMAN. 

Therefore,  he  can  invoke  death  with  a  gentle 
song  (p.  346)  as  though  singing  his  own  painless 
birth,  or  soothing  his  past  to  sleep  awhile  in  the 
gentle  cradle  of  the  grave. 

But  once  grant  this  indestructible  identity 
throughout  change  to  man,  why  should  it  be  denied 
to  animals  and  trees  ?  Why,  the  very  thought  of 
fixed  species  is  odious.*  Nothing  ought  to  be  ar- 
bitrarily fixed  forever.  "  Every  thing  "  for  Whitman 
"  has  an  eternal  soul." 

The  trees  have  rooted  in  the  ground  !  the  weeds  of  the  sea  have ! 
the  animals!     (p.  337.) 

The  soul  "  receives  identity  through  materials." 
(p.  146.)  It  built  up  out  of  these  a  body,  and  so  the 
soul  "  received  identity  by  its  body." 

That  I  was  I  knew  was  of  nay  body,  and  what  I  should  be  I  knew 
I  should  be  of  my  body.     (p.  131.) 

This  body  was  "born"  of  its  "mother"  to 
"  identify  "  the  soul.  (p.  335.) 

The  known  life,  the  transient, 

Is  to  form  and  decide  identity  for  the  unknown  life,  the  permanent. 

-(p.  337.) 

The  world  about  it  "  leads  "  the  soul  to  "  identity  " 
and  "  body  "  (p.  349)  and  offers  it  further : 

The  temporary  use  of  materials  for  identity's  sake  ;    (p.  374.) 
and    finally,   "there    is   nothing    but    immortality." 
(p.  337.) 

All  is  preparation  for  it — and  identity  is  for  it.     (Id.) 

*  "  On  the  Origin  of  Species,  etc.,"  1859,  "  The  Descent  of 
Man,  etc.,"  1871,  Whitman,  as  Goethe  (Wordsworth  on  one  oc- 
casion) and  Browning  must  be  credited  with  a  thorough  grasp  of 
the  idea  of  universal  evolution  before  the  epoch  making  books  of 
Darwin  were  composed. 


PERSONAL   IDENTITY.  75 

But  if  "  identity  "  always  implies  "body  "  and  the 
"  corpse  "  we  will  leave  will  be  but "  excrementitions," 
(p.  344) — indeed,  "  for  reasons  "  it  is  "myself"  who 
"'discharge  my  excrementitious  body  "  (p.  147) — there 
must  be  a  "  real  body  doubtless  left  to  me  for  other 
spheres."  The  "  voided  body  "  returns  to  "  further 
offices,"  to  "the  eternal  uses  of  the  earth."  (Id.)  If 
even  now  "  it  is  not  my  material  eyes  which  finally 
see,  nor  my  material  body  which  finally  loves,  walks, 
laughs,  shouts,  embraces,  procreates"  (p.  146),  then 
even  now  there  must  be  a  real  body  that  does  these 
things. 

The  living  look  upon  the  corpse  with  their  eyesight 
But  without  eyesight  lingers  a  different  living  and  looks  curiously 
on  the  corpse,     (p.  333.) 

0  to  disengage  myself  from  those  corpses  of  me,  which  I  turn  and 

look  at  where  I  cast  them,     (p,  344.) 

Such  lines  then  as  these  are  not  to  be  taken  as 
fanciful  altogether.  Whitman  does  not  doubt  that 
"interiors  have  their  interiors,  and  that  exteriors  have 
their  exteriors;"  "that  the  eyesight  has  another  eye- 
sight, and  the  hearing  another  hearing,  and  the  voice 
another  voice."  (p.  342.)  Even  now  to  the  seer 
"your  true  soul  and  body  appear."  (p.  186.)  Just  as 
surely  as 

1  see  one  building,  the  house  that  serves  him  for  a  few  years,  or 

seventy  or  eighty  years  at  most, 

if  my  spiritual  eyes  were  open  could 

I  see  one  building,  the  house  that  serves  him  longer  than  that. 

-(p.  334.) 

Indeed,  Whitman  can  see  his  fellow-man  con- 
structing, though  unconsciously,  "the  house  of  him- 
self or  herself"  that  will  "  serve  for  all  time."  (p.  304.) 


76  WALT   WHITMAN. 

Nor  does  this  "  real  body "  pass  out  empty,  as  it 
"passes  to  fitting  spheres,"  for  it  "carries  what  has 
accrued  to  it  from  the  moment  of  birth  to  the  mo- 
ment of  death."  (p.  25.)  It  has  been  thus  fashioned, 
invisibly,  by  the  hands  of  life  to  serve  as  organ  to 
your  veritable  Self.  No  bullet  can  really  "kill  what 
you  really  are."  (p.  251.) 

What  you  are  picks  its  way.  (p.  188.) 
Nay,  already  while  leading  this  life  of  fleshly  vi- 
cissitude "Apart  from  the  pulling  and  hauling  stands 
what  I  am.  ...  I  witness  and  wait."  (p.  32.) 
What  is  more,  this  "Me  myself"  (p.  32)  is  not  the 
soul,  if  Whitman  be  relied  upon  to  use  his  terms  with 
any  accuracy,  for  elsewhere  we  read : 

I  too,  with  my  soul  and  body, 

We,  a  curious  trio,  picking,  wandering  on  our  way.    (p.  185.) 

We  should  have  then,  according  to  our  review  so 
far  of  Whitman's  doctrine,  at  least  four  distinct  ele- 
ments in  man : — 

(1)  the  excrementitious  body.* 

(2)  the  real  body. 

(3)  the  soul. 

(4)  Me  myself. 

PERPETUITY   OF   CHARACTER. 

But  all  this  would  seem  unnecessary  speculation 
if  for  the  soul  beyond  these  spheres  there  were  nothing 
more  to  provide  for  than  identity.  "What  has  ac- 
crued to  the  soul"  on  earth,  of  which  the  real  body  is 
vehicle,  must  be  irr  itself  a  secure  possession.  Now 
on  no  subject  is  Whitman  more  emphatic  than  on  the 


PERPETUITY   OF    CHARACTER.  77 

universality  of  Law.  "  The  whole  Universe  is  abso- 
lute Law."  (Pr.,  p.  336.)  Miracles  in  the  sense  of 
wonders  all  things  whatsoever  most  assuredly  are : — 

Why,  who  makes  much  of  a  miracle  ? 

As  to  me  I  know  of  nothing  but  miracles  (p.  301) ; 

in  the  sense  of  exceptions,  however,  there  can  be  none 
without  immediately  reducing  cosmos  to  chaos.  "  The 
great  master  has  nothing  to  do  with  miracles."  (Pr., 
p.  270.)  The  true  modern  Poet  denies  all  exceptions. 
"  Law  is  the  unshakable  order  of  the  universe  forever ; 
and  the  law  over  all,  and  law  of  laws,  is  the  law  of 
successions ;  that  of  the  superior  law,  in  time,  gradu- 
ally supplanting  and  overwhelming  the  inferior  one." 
(Pr.,  p.  219.)  This  passage  has  immediate  reference, 
to  be  sure,  to  "  physical  force  being  superseded  by 
that  of  the  spirit,"  but  its  language  implies  that  it  is 
of  general  validity.  Thus  we  have  evolution  as  the 
"  law  of  laws." 

With  the  irrefragableness  of  law  *  and  with  the 
doctrine  besides  that  "  only  the  soul  is  of  itself— all 
else  has  reference  to  what  ensues"  so  that  in  it  is  the 
real  judge  of  conduct,f  it  is  clear  there  can  be  "no 
possible  forgiveness  or  deputed  atonement."  (p.  291 ; 
Pr.,  p.  273.)  "  Each  man  to  himself,  and  each  woman 
to  herself,  is  the  word  of  the  past  and  the  present,  and 
the  true  word  of  immortality."  J  (p.  178.)  Jehovah, 

*  Cf.  Miracles,  p.  301. 

t  Compare  "  There  is  no  one  or  any  particle  but  has  reference 
to  the  soul "  (p.  25)  with  "  It  is  not  consistent  with  the  reality  of 
the  soul  to  admit  that  there  is  any  thing  in  the  known  universe 
more  divine  than  men  and  women."  (Pr.,  p.  270.) 

t  See  in  Appendix  a  note  on  Lord  Byron  as  a  "  Chanter  of 
Personality  "  m  the  sense  of  a  moral  responsibility  that  can  not 
be  shifted  on  another. 


78  WALT   WHITMAN. 

Brahm,  or  Saturnius,  Universal  Law  in  Time,  "is  re- 
lentless "  and  "forgives  no  man  " — "  dispenses  .  .  . 
judgments  inexorable  without  the  least  remorse."  (p. 
339.)  Expiation  alone  blots  out : 

Miserable !  yet  for  thy  errors,  vanities,  sins,  I  will  not  now  rebuke 

thee, 

Thy  unexampled  woes  and  pangs  have  quelled  them  all, 
And  left  thee  sacred,    (p.  306.) 

It  is,  however,  not  suffering  as  such  that  helps. 
It  is  suffering,  of  the  kind  that  quells  the  sins  by 
stimulating  growth,  which  of  itself  alone  amounts  to 
a  "  forgiveness." 

In  the  higher  structure  of  a  human  self,  or  of  community,  the 
Moral,  the  Religious,  the  Spiritual,  is  strictly  analogous  to  the 
subtle  vitalization  and  antiseptic  play  called  Health  in  the  physi- 
ological structure.  (Pr.,  p.  471.) 

Reformation  comes  from  within.  Evil  being  uu- 
derdevelopment,  all  that  is  needed  is  development. 
There  is,  when  the  ways  are  amended,  no  sin  left  to 
forgive. 

Of  all  "  leadings,"  "  none  lead  to  greater  things  " 
than  occupations  "  lead  to."  (p.  175.)  Columbus 
gave  God  a  "  long  and  crowded  life  of  active  work, 
not  adoration  merely."  (p.  323.) 

Ah!  little  recks  the  laborer, 

How  near  his  work  is  holding  him  to  God, 

The  loving  Laborer  through  space  and  time.    (p.  157.) 

For  the  law  of  action  and  reaction  being  equal 
and  contrary  extends  into  the  spiritual  world,  and  is 
its  chief  law :  "  Whatsoever  a  man  soweth,  that  shall 
he  also  reap."  (Gal.  vi,  7.) 

All  that  a  person  does,  says,  thinks,  is  of  consequence, 

Not  a  move  can  a  man  or  woman  make  that  affects  him  or  her  in 


PERPETUITY  OF  CHARACTER.  79 

a  day,  month,  any  part  of  the  direct  lifetime,  or  the  hour  of 

death, 
But  the  same  affects  him  or  her  onward  afterward  through  the 

indirect  lifetime,     (p.  290.) 
All  that  is  to  be  henceforth  thought  or  done  by  you,  whoever  you 

are,  or  by  any  one, 
These  inure,  have  inured,  shall  inure,  to  the  identities  from  which 

they  sprang,  or  shall  spring,     (p.  291.) 

Therefore,  there  is  a  "  prudence  that  suits  im- 
mortality." (p.  289.)*  True,  "caution"  has  refer- 
ence  to  the  eternal,  preferring  it  to  the  temporal. 
(Cf.  Pr.,  p.  272.)  It  "knows  that  only  that  person 
has  really  learned  "  the  lesson  of  life  well,  who  has 
"learned  to  prefer  results"  (p.  291),f  "immense 
spiritual  results  "  (p.  374) ;  and  aware  that  every  act 
"  has  results  beyond  death  as  really  as  before  death  " 
(p.  290),  the  truly  prudent  man,  whose  caution  goes 
far  enough  (Pr.,  p.  272),  realizes  to  the  full  that 

Charity  and  personal  force  are  the  only  investments  worth  any 
thing  for  after  all.    (p.  290.) 

"  Itself  only  finally  satisfies  the  soul "  (p.  291), 
and  not  any  thing  exterior  and  adventitious  con- 
tributing to  its  real  secret  felicity,  which  as  seen  before 
is  always  an  "  Efflux  of  the  Soul." 

We  shall  have  to  add  then  to  our  analysis  of  the 
constitution  of  man,  according  to  Whitman,  a  fur- 
ther element  inhering  in  the  real  body  and  the  soul, 
the  perpetuity  of  which  is  strongly  affirmed — the  Char- 
acter. 

We  have  thus  five  distinct  elements  : 


*  Cf.  Emerson's  Essays  on  Prudence,  Self-Reliance,  and  Com- 
pensation. 

t  Not  utilitarian  doctrine,  e.  g,,  his  idea  of  the  greatness  of 
defeat,  etc.,  pp.  43,  45,  288,  etc. 


80  WALT   WHITMAN. 

1)  excrementitious  Body, 

2)  the  real  Body, 

~     ,      f   (3)  the  Character, 
{    (4)  the  Soul, 

Spirit  —  (5)  Me  myself, 

which,  if  we  have  bracketed  the  first  two  couples,  are 
very  readily  reducible  to  the  Pauline  trichotomy.* 

"TRAVELING  SOULS"  AND  THEIR  END. 

In  the  matter  of  Whitman's  theology  there  now 
remains  only  to  adduce  evidence  as  to  what  his  con- 
ception of  immortal  life  really  is.  "Something  there 
is  more  immortal  than  the  stars."  (p.  206.)  He  be- 
lieves in  nothing  short  of  perfection  for  each  and  all. 
It  is  part  of  Whitman's  very  manliness  that  he  does 
not  want  privileged  classes,  saints  or  heroes.  He 
wants  equal  opportunities.  He  does  not  himself  get 

*  Particular  evidence  of  the  view  taken  in  this  paper  (that 
Whitman's  oriental  doctrines  were  not  merely  borrowed  or 
adopted)  may  be  found  in  the  fact  that  his  analysis  of  man  gives 
us  five  elements  only  instead  of  the  Hindu  Seven.  To  make  them 
seven,  the  "  Me  Myself "  would  have  to  be  declared  a  Trinity.  If 
it  be  contended  that  he  does  recognize  Father,  Son  and  Holy 
Ghost,  it  must  be  remembered  that  where  he  does  so,  he  gives 
similar  recognition  to  Satan.  In  case  then  you  take  the  "  Square 
Deific"  literally  as  analyzing  the  "Divine  Me  Myself,"  you  would 
have  eight  and  not  seven  elements.  But,  as  indicated  already,  I 
do  not  understand  the  "  Square  Deific  "  as  a  study  of  "God,"  but 
of  our  "  Idea  of  God,"  quite  another  thing.  Whitman  does  not 
presume  to  give  us  a  bit  of  Divine  Psychology.  Of  the  inner  life 
of  Diety,  he  does  not  pretend  to  know  more  than  any  other  sane 
and  enlightened  mortal.  And,  for  one,  "  with  the  Mystery  of 
God  he  dares  not  dally." 


"TRAVELING    SOULS "    AND    THEIR   END.  81 

any  mean  comfort  from  being  above  others.  He  is 
thoroughly  consistent,  as  most  revolutionaries  and 
vindicators  of  the  people's  rights,  alas,  are  not: — 

By  God !  I  will  accept  nothing  which  all  can  not  have  their  coun- 
terpart of  on  the  same  terms,  (p.  48.) 

He  sings  exultantly : — 

Of  the  progress  of  the  souls  of  men  and  women  along  the  grand 
roads  of  the  universe,  all  other  progress  is  the  needed  em- 
blem and  sustenance. 

Forever  alive,  forever  forward    .    .    . 

They  go !  they  go !  I  know  that  they  go,  but  I  know  not  where 
they  go, 

But  I  know  that  they  go  toward  the  best.     (p.  127.) 

Feeling  that  he  has  not  really  finished  the  work 
he  might  have  done,  not  learned  the  lesson  out,  not 
tasted  all  the  legitimate  delights  here,  he  believes  that 
he  will  "come  again  upon  the  earth  after  five  thou- 
sand years."  (p.  69.)  When  he  meets  a  man  full  of 
his  achievements  he  pointedly  reminds  him  of  a  cer- 
tain possibility  likely  to  calm  him : 

Have  you  outstript  the  rest  ?  are  you  the  president  ? 
It  is  a  trifle,  they  will  more  than  arrive  there,  every  one  and  still 
pass  on.     (p.  45.) 

Clearly  it  will  not  be  in  this  particular  earth  life. 
To  members  of  low  and  unfortunate  races  he  addresses 
words  of  comfort  and  encouragement : — 

I  do  not  say  one  word  against  you  way  back  there  where  you 

stand, 
You  will  come  forward  in  due  time  to  my  side.     (p.  120.) 

He  is  not  anxious  about  the  ill-born  and  ill- 
bred  : — 

The  twisted  skull  waits,  the  watery  or  rotten  blood  waits, 
The  child  of  the  glutton  waits  long,  and  the  child  of  the  drunkard 
waits  long,  and  the  drunkard  himself  waits  long, 


82  WALT   WHITMAN. 

The  sleepers  that  lived  and  died  wait,  the  far  advanced  are  to  go 

on  in  their  turns,  and  the  far  behind  are  to  come  on  in  their 

turns,    (p.  331.) 
I  saw  the  face  of  the  most  smeared  and  slobbering  idiot  they  had 

at  the  asylum, 

And  I  knew  for  my  consolation  what  they  knew  not, 
I  knew  of  the  agents  that  emptied  and  broke  my  brother, 
The  same  wait  to  clear  the  rubbish  from  the  fallen  tenement, 
And  I  shall  look  again  in  a  score  or  two  of  ages, 
And  I  shall  meet  the  real  landlord  perfect  and  unharmed,  every 

inch  as  good  as  myself,    (p.  354.) 

His  attitude  to  the  animals  is  of  course  exactly 
the  same;  and  why  not?  Does  he  not  feel  between 
them  and  himself  a  very  decided  kinship  ? 

They  bring  me  tokens  of  myself,  they  evince  them  plainly  in  their 

possession, 

I  wonder  where  they  got  those  tokens, 

Did  I  pass  that  way  huge  times  ago  and  negligently  drop  them  ? 

-(P-  54.) 

Nor  will  he  confine  his  doctrine  of  progress  from 
form  to  form  by  any  means  to  animals: — 

The  vegetables  and  the  minerals  are  all  perfect,  and  the  impon- 
derable fluids  perfect; 

Slowly  and  surely  they  have  passed  on  to  this,  and  slowly  and 
surely  they  yet  pass  on.  (p.  337.) 

How  significant,  after  perusing  those  extracts  to- 
gether, sound  not  now  the  words  quoted  before  in  a 
feebler  sense : — 

As  to  you  Life,  I  reckon  you  are  the  leavings  of  many  deaths, 
(No  doubt  I  have  died  myself  ten  thousand  times  before !)  (p.  77.) 

He  is  not  one  whit  tired  in  spirit : 
All  below  duly  traveled,  and  still  I  mount  and  mount.*    (p.  71.) 


*  That  Whitman  ever  went  further,  and  found  it  necessary  to 
adopt  a  theory  of  cycles  or  "  cosmic  incarnations,"  so  to  say,  is 
very  doubtful.  The  word  "  cycle  "  appears  three  times  in  L.  of 
G.,  pp.  27,  72,  85.  With  his  anthropocentric  view,  the  cosmos 


"TRAVELING    SOULS "    AND    THEIR   END.  83 

We  have  seen  that  he  has  fully  kept  his  word, 
having  sung  the  "  Songs  of  birth  and  shown  that  there 
are  many  births."  (p.  380.) 

If  any  one  should  protest,  but  "  I  do  not  care  to 
be  perfect  at  such  a  cost;  I  don't  want  you  to  be 
urging  me  this  way.  I  am  tired.  Sing  me  a  pleasant 
lullaby  instead,  about  how  every  thing  is  going  to  be 
done  for  me!"  I  fancy  sturdy  old  Walt  would  answer: 
"  Go  lull  yourself  with  what  you  can  understand,  and 
with  pianoforte  tunes,  for  I  lull  nobody,  and  you  will 
never  understand  me."  (p.  252.)  Yet  there  is  a  peace 
ahead.  That  fifth  element  in  man,  the  Me  myself,  is 
one  in  all.  To  live  in  it  is  to  be  finally  at  rest.  This 
it  was  the  very  object  of  Whitman  to  glorify,  yet 
with  beautiful  candor  he  confesses  inability  to  approach 
it  for  us. 

The  diverse  shall  be  no  less  diverse,  but  they  shall  flow  and 
unite — they  unite  now.  (p.  331.) 

There  is  to  be  yet  a  "  salvation  universal,"  an  in- 
describable attainment : 

When  I  undertake  to  tell  the  best,  I  find  I  can  not.    .    .    . 
I  become  a  dumb  man.    (p.  179.) 

Aware  that  .  .  .  before  all  my  arrogant  poems  the  real  Me 
stands,  yet  untouched,  untold,  altogether  unreached, 

Withdrawn  far,  mocking  me  with  mock  congratulatory  signs  and 
bows, 

With  peals  of  distant  ironical  laughter  at  every  word  I  have 
written, 


did  not  interest  him  per  se.  To  account  for  it  was  not  his  object. 
Indeed  he  tells  us  (cf.  Pr.,  p.  298)  "  the  rule  and  demesne  of  poetry 
will  always  be  not  the  exterior  but  the  interior,  not  the  macro- 
cosm but  microcosm,  not  Nature  but  Man.  Of  the  doctrine  of 
metempsychosis  a  good  illustration  is  given  in  the  closing  eight 
lines  of  "  The  Sleepers."  (p.  332.)  (Cf.  p.  282  of  this  essay.) 


84  WALT   WHITMAN. 

Pointing  in  silence  to  these  songs  and  then  to  the  sand  beneath, 
I  perceive  I  have  not  really  understood  any  thing,  not  a  single 

object,  and  that  no  man  ever  can, 
Nature  here  in  sight  of  the  sea,  taking  advantage  of  me  to  dart 

upon  me  and  sting  me, 
Because  I  have  dared  to  open  my  mouth  and  sing  at  all. 

-(pp.  202-3.) 

In  the  poem,  "A  Eiddle  Song,"  he  shows  why 
this  is  so.  That  which  eludes  him  is  that  which 
makes  all  intelligible,  and  which  itself  can  only  be 
known  face  to  face. 

Haply  God's  riddle  it,  so  vague  and  yet  so  certain, 
The  soul  for  it,  and  all  the  visible  universe  for  it, 
And  heaven  at  last  for  it.    (p.  363.) 

It  is  the  terrible  "  One  Self"  *— 
The  fanged  and  glittering  One  whose  head  is  over  all,    (p.  21.) 

and  of  whom  to  speak  as  one's  self  is  absurd,  and  yet 
as  "other  than  one's  Self"  absurder  still. 

Hymns  to  the  universal  God  from  the  universal 
Man  are  the  last  fact  we  discern  with  mortal  eye,  il- 
lumined though  it  be : 

The  ocean  filled  with  joy — the  atmosphere  all  joy ! 

Joy !  Joy !  in  freedom,  worship,  love !  joy  in  the  ecstasy  of  life ! 

Enough  to  merely  be !  enough  to  breathe ! 

Joy !  Joy !  all  over  joy !    (p.  358. )t 

WHITMAN'S  METHODS  AND  STYLE. 

To  compose  according  to  a  theory  that  greatly 
varies  from  what  may  be  said  to  have  at  least  been 
immanent  in  literature  before,  is  a  perilous  venture. 

*  For  clearness'  sake  I  have  taken  some  liberties  with  the 
word  "  oneself,"  spelling  it  differently  according  to  the  different 
meanings. 

t  See  pp.  255-259  for  an  exposition  of  the  doctrine  of  the  One. 


WHITMAN'S  METHODS  AND  STYLE.  85 

Men  of  great  initiative  genius  and  courage  will,  to  be 
sure,  always  stake  life  and  fame  upon  a  consistent 
protest  against  tyrannous  tradition.  But  more  often 
than  not  a  man's  theory  of  composition  is  one  thing, 
and  his  practice  another. 

Now,  Whitman  undoubtedly  repels  many  a 
reader  by  his  oracular  manner.  He  is  fully  aware  of 
this. 

These  leaves  and  me  you  will  not  understand, 

They  will  elude  you  at  first  and  still  more  afterward.  I  will  cer- 
tainly elude  you. 

Even  while  you  should  think  you  had  unquestionably  caught  me, 
behold! 

Already  you  see  I  have  escaped  from  you.     (p.  98.) 

Nor  is  it  any  thing  we  can  really  bring  against 
him.  He  writes  to  "  tease  us  out  of"  our  usual  petty 
"  thought."  *  He  delights  in  paradox.  He  does  not 
try  to  astonish.  The  man  is  free  from  any  conscious 
tricks.  The  fact  is,  however,  that  the  whole  object 
of  Whitman  at  all  times  is  not  to  do  something  for 
his  reader,  but  to  make  his  reader  do  something  for 
himself. 

You  are  asking  me  questions  and  I  hear  you, 

I  answer  that  I  can  not  answer,  you  must  find  out  for  yourself. 

-(p.  74.) 

If  poetry  be  "  criticism  of  life"  or  not,  is  best  set- 
tled by  the  fact  perhaps  that  the  only  true  criticism  of 
great  poetry  is  life.  Such  Walt  Whitman's  surely  is 
if  we  should  accept  this  test — that  the  great  poetry 
keeps  pace  with  our  advance,  always  a  step  or  two 
ahead — while  poetry  that  is  not  great  we  soon  leave 
behind : 


*  Keat's  "  Ode  to  a  Grecian  Urn ;"  the  office  of  all  true  art. 


86  WALT    WHITMAN. 

For  it  is  not  for  what  I  have  put  into  it  that  I  have  written  this 

book, 
Nor  is  it  by  reading  it  you  will  acquire  it.     (p.  98.) 

Undoubtedly  however  there  are  other  tests  of 
poetry  which  seem  more  important  to  the  majority  of 
critics.  That  he  should  have  to  "wait  to  be  under- 
stood by  the  growth  of  the  taste  of"  himself  (p.  273) 
would  be  nothing  peculiar  to  him ; — Wordsworth, 
Shelley,  Browning,  are  well  known  modern  instances 
of  an  author's  having,  as  it  were,  to  beget  a  new  gen- 
eration of  readers. 

But  though  Whitman's  "  words  "  do  undoubtedly 
"itch  at"  one's  "ears,"  till  they  are  understood  (p.  75), 
it  would  be  insincere  in  the  most  enthusiastic  disciple 
not  to  admit  the  many  difficulties  of  approach  to  his 
master  which  seem  at  first  sight  gratuitous  tests  of  pa- 
tience, fortitude,  self-control,  and  one  might  almost 
add  foolhardihood.  A  man  who  boldly  declares  that 
"serving  art  in  its  highest"  is  "only  the  other  name 
for  serving  God,  and  serving  humanity"  (Pr.,  p.  242), 
would,  it  might  be  supposed,  spare  no  pains  to  make 
what  he  attempts  to  create  as  nearly  perfect  as  possi- 
ble. But  it  is  not  so  much  that  Whitman  considers 
the  "love  of  the  best"  a  "friend"  that  only  "harries" 
man  ;*  it  is  that  with  him  the  poem  is  not  on  paper, 
or  in  the  ear  of  the  reader,  but  in  his  mind.  Perfect 
"  literary  form"  to  Whitman  is  whatever  most  directly 
arouses  in  the  reader's  mind  what  is  in  the  poet's  own. 
lie  goes  even  further  than  this.  A  moral  purpose  is 
always  latent.  "  Not  the  book  needs  so  much  to  be 
the  complete  thing,  but  the  reader  of  the  book  does." 
(Pr.,p.  257.)  The  reader  "  must  himself  construct  .  .  . 


*  Cf.  "Sphinx"  of  E.  W.  Emerson. 


WHITMAN'S  METHODS  AND  STYLE.  87 

the  poem."  The  poet's  language,  if  "fanned  by  the 
breath  of  nature,"  "  seldomer  tells  a  thing  than  sug- 
gests or  necessitates  it."  (Id.)  The  poet,  because  he  is  a 
poet,  wants  to  make  a  poet  of  you.  He  is — "hungry 
for  equals  day  and  night."  (Pr.,  p.  269.)  Like  Moses 
he  cries  "  would  God  that  all  the  Lord's  people  were 
prophets  and  that  the  Lord  would  put  his  spirit  upon 
them."*  He  will  have  you  not  only  become  quite  in- 
dependent of  him  furnishing  your  own  home-made 
chants,  but  he  will  have  you  illustrate  them  in  what 
you  are.  "All  must  give  place  to  men  and  women." 
(p.  175.)  "  How  dare  you  place  any  thing  before  a 
man?"  (p.  272.)  "The  psalm"  does  not  sing  itself, 
therefore  he  prefers  "  the  singer,"  and,  quite  consist- 
ently, the  reader  is  more  precious  to  him  than  the 
poems  he  shall  peruse,  (p.  175.)  These  are,  therefore, 
"not  the  finish,"  but  rather  "the  outset."  "To  none 
will  they  bring  to  be  content  and  full."  (p.  138.) 
They  will  be  "good  health  to  you."  (p.  79.)  They 
are  "chants  ...  to  vivify  all"  (p.  20)  by  inspiring 
the  faith  which  in  turn  arouses  dormant  powers. 

Now  it  is  a  fact  that  Whitman's  poems  possess,  to 
a  very  eminent  degree,  this  vital  suggestiveness.f  Nor 
is  there  any  respectable  critic  who  will  quarrel  with 
their  originality  of  form  as  such.  He  does  not  con- 
sider our  prejudices  when  he  writes.!  "People  resent 
any  thing  new  as  a  personal  insult"  (Pr.,  p.  482),  and 
in  support  of  this  he  quotes  Bacon  as  saying  that 
"  the  first  sight  of  any  work  really  new  and  first  rate 

*  Numb,  xi,  29. 

t  Whitman  does  not  leave  this  doctrine  of  "  suggestion  "  to 
be  inferred.     (C/.  Pr.,  pp.  483  and  493 ;  L.  of  G.,  p.  434.) 
t  Cf.  on  writing  for  the  public.     (Pr.,  p.  497.) 


88  WALT   WHITMAN. 

in  beauty  or  originality  always  arouses  something 
disagreeable  and  repulsive."  (Pr.,  p.  482.)  In  tbis 
we  can  not  but  agree  witb  him.  But  we  are  still  not 
wholly  convinced  that  any  true  theory  of  composition 
can  justify  some  things  in  Leaves  of  Grass.  In  fact 
we  are  sure  that  whenever  Whitman  was  most  con- 
sistent with  an  extreme  doctrine  of  " suggestion" 
he  utterly  failed  in  his  purpose.  To  men  endowed 
with  a  quick,  pictorial  imagination,  page-long  cata- 
logues of  geographical  and  physiological  names  may 
conceivably  be  a  source  of  extreme  delight,  and 
amount  to  a  trip  around  the  world,  or  to  the  posses- 
sion of  a  wonderful  human  body  translucent,  nay 
transparent  for  the  investigator's  eye.  To  most  men, 
however,  these  catalogues  are  a  "reductio  ad  absurdum" 
of  the  theory.*  They  mean  little  or  nothing  at  all. 
They  are  simply  a  weariness  to  the  flesh.  Nothing 
perhaps  has  more  contributed  to  heap  deserved  ridi- 
cule on  Whitman. 

True  that  a  so-called  "  negligent  list  of  one  after 

*  Sydney  Lanier's  use  of  the  "  catalogue  "  in  the  "  Symphony  " 
is  very  astonishing  and  effective.  Each  name  a  note  as  it  were. 
We  can  not  but  honestly  admit  a  feeling  that  the  disciple  here 
succeeded  where  the  master  failed. 

Speaking  of  Sydney  Lanier,  were  not  those  clever  would-be 
destructive  paragraphs  in  his  <:  English  Novel  "a  somewhat  un- 
generous attempt  to  conceal  from  himself  and  his  readers  his  own 
evident  indebtedness,  in  his  best  poetry,  to  the  rugged  singer  of 
"athletic  manhood?"  Poor,  sick  Sydney  Lanier !  How  such  a 
line  as  "  only  health  puts  one  rapport  with  the  universe  "  must 
have  stung  him!  But  old  Walt  can  well  afford  to  be  mag- 
nanimous, and  wholly  ignores  his  impertinent  critique,  including 
Lanier's  in  the  list  of  names  for  which  he  has  a  "  heart-beuison  " 
and  "  reverence  for  their  memories,"  "  the  galaxy  of  the  past." 
(Cf.  Pr.,  pp.  431-482.) 


WHITMAN'S  METHODS  AND  STYLE.  89 

another  as  I  happen  to  call  them  to  me  or  think  of 
them  "  (p.  89)  is  not  without  an  inner  law,  but  it  is 
one  of  purely  personal  association  and  therefore  to  us 
readers  in  all  probability  an  unintelligible  law.  For 
him  the  beads  maybe  made  a  necklace,  but  he  has  cut 
the  string  and  hurried  the  beads  helter  skelter  into 
our  lap.  There  is  no  use  pretending  that  we  shall 
re-string  them.  We  do  not.  But,  when  the  list  is 
systematic,  then  we  are  still  more  annoyed.  We  feel 
that  he  is  tricking  us.  He  has  had  a  text-book  con- 
veniently at  hand,  surely,  for  reference,  or  his  memory 
is  really  altogether  too  retentive. 

We  are  not  surprised  that  there  should  be  much 
incoherence  in  chants  professedly  "  ecstatic,"  but  that 
the  sentence  form  should  be  deliberately  abandoned  is 
somewhat  amazing.  For  after  all,  if  man  occupies 
the  central  position  in  nature,  which  Whitman  ar- 
rogates for  him,  he  surely  has  a  right  to  impose  on 
nature  the  laws  of  his  own  being.  It  is  quite  true 
that  things  are  not  respectively  subjects  and  objects 
set  off  against  one  another,  distinguished  from  all 
other  things,  and  fettered  in  unique  relations,  rep- 
resented by  verbs  hovering  between  subjects  and 
objects.  Nevertheless  it  is  useless  to  defy  man's 
mental  constitution.  If  Whitman  does  not  make 
sentences  for  us,  we  must,  mentally  at  least,  make 
sentences  for  ourselves  out  of  his  fragments.  Still, 
again,  we  ought  to  admit  with  all  candor  that  a 
breathless  speed,  a  sense  of  kaleidoscopic  change,  are 
often  effects  apparently  due  to  this  rejection  of  the 
sentence-form  ;  and  we  would  venture  to  suggest  that 
whenever  Whitman  deliberately  constructed  a  cata- 
logue, or  refused  to  form  sentences,  he  failed  of  his 


90  WALT   WHITMAN. 

purpose,  and  deserved  to  fail,  but  when  the  verbal  in- 
coherency,  the  bombardment  of  independent  nouns 
was  a  necessity  imposed  from  within,  he  succeeded  in 
producing  the  desired  result. 

Poetic  style,  when  addressed  to  the  soul,  is  less  definite  form, 
outline,  sculpture,  and  becomes  vista,  music,  half  tints,  and  even 
less  than  half  tints.  True,  it  may  be  architecture ;  but  again  it 
maybe  the  forest  wild  wood,  or  the  best  effect  thereof  at  twilight, 
the  waving  oaks,  and  cedars  in  the  wind,  and  the  impalpable 
odor.  (Pr.,  p.  287.) 

The  general  truth  of  this  we  may  admit.  We 
may  give  up  the  "  garden  "  (Pr.,  p.  497)  for  the  road- 
side mob  of  wild  flowers ;  with  him,  we  may  prefer 
the  Rocky  Mountains  to  a  row  of  pyramids  and 
obelisks  (Pr.,  p.  143),  and  yet  might  we  not  protest 
that  every  thing  man  makes  must  have  a  beginning, 
a  middle  and  an  end,  a  center  and  a  circumference  ? 
After  all,  as  said  above,  man  imposes  on  the  wildest 
landscape  la\vs  of  perspective  that  reduce  it  to  human 
comprehension.  It  would  be  more  natural  if  we 
should  emancipate  things  from  this  arbitrary  tyranny, 
but  how  can  we  be  thus  "  faithful  to  things  "  (p.  271) 
without  failing  to  reject "  whatever  insults  "  our  souls 
(p.  273),  both  which  are  imperative  commands  of 
Whitman  to  the  true  Poet  of  Democracy  ?  (Pr.,  p. 
265-6.)  Whitman's  best  poems  are  neither  chaotic,  nor 
mechanically  symmetrical.  They  are  true  organisms. 
They  are  sons  of  his  spirit  "  begotten,  not  made." 

Rhymes  and  rhymers  pass  away,  poems  distilled  from  poems  pass 

away, 

The  swarms  of  reflectors  and  the  polite  pass,  and  leave  ashes, 
Admirers,  importers,  obedient  persons,  make  but  the  soil  of  liter- 
ature,   (p.  272.) 

We  would  not  for  one  moment  have  Whitman 


91 

less  arrogant,  defiant.  We  have  too  much  enjoyed, 
in  sympathy,  his  great  declaration  of  independence. 
We  would  boldly  assert  that  it  is  good,  very  good,  in- 
deed, that  Whitman  abandoned  the  old  forms  of  "  ar- 
bitrary and  rhyming  metre."  We  are  willing  he 
should  "  soar  to  the  freer,  vast,  diviner  heaven  of 
prose."  We  are  quite  satisfied,  provided  his  work  is 
as  he  himself  demands  "  subtly  and  necessarily,  always 
rhythmic  "  /  .  .  "  distinguishable  easily  enough." 
(Pr.,  p.  328.)  This  it  is  not  always.  It  does  not  always 
"soar."  It  often  has  no  wings  at  all.  It  sometimes 
falls  far  below  the  veriest  flats  of  prose.  Is  Matthew 
Arnold's  Philomela  verse?  and  therefore  poetry? 
Then  quite  as  surely  must  Whitman's  good  work  be 
recognized  as  poety,  even  if  Sidney  and  Shelley  be 
vociferously  voted  heretics  by  a  majority  of  critics  for 
calling  Plato  a  poet,  though  he  wrote  in  prose. 
Rhythm  is  the  pulse  of  poetry ;  should  it  not  then 
quicken  with  emotion,  become  sluggish  almost  sus- 
pended, with  the  feeling  of  inner  stillness;  or  should 
it  by  its  clock-like  regularity  argue  the  mere  abstract- 
ness  of  the  poem,  our  utter  indifference  to  it,  the  entire 
lack  of  vital  sympathy  between  spirit  and  form,  mak- 
ing the  form  not  a  living  expressive  body,  but  a  life- 
less vessel  wholly  unconcerned  with  the  nature  of  its 
contents?*  To  quote  superb  instances  from  Whit- 
man would  be  a  delightful  and  extremely  easy  task. 

*  Again,  in  this  matter  of  "  organic  form,"  Lanier  has  grasped 
the  same  idea  as  Whitman.  "  Corn  "  and  two  of  his  "  Hymns  to 
the  Marshes,"  in  some  respects  his  very  best  work,  have,  pre- 
serving rhyme,  and  with  an  over-use,  perhaps,  of  alliteration,  ut- 
terly abandoned  metre  of  a  fixed  kind,  and  an  arbitrary  stanza, 
while  the  rhythm  is  made  to  impart  the  mood. 


92  WALT   WHITMAN. 

Whitman  rarely  spoils  good  matter  with  bad  form ;  it 
is  because  matter  unfit  for  use,  or  such  as  he  at  all 
events  did  not  know  how  to  use,  is  mixed  with  it,  that 
there  are  gaps,  bottomless  pits  of— not  prose— but 
something  as  much  below  plain  prose  as  his  levels  and 
heights  are  above  it.  As  for  his  vocabulary,  no  one 
will  say  that  Whitman  was  a  slavish  "follower  of 
beauty,"  though,  again,  he  was  not  always  her 
"  august  master."  (p.  137.)  He  is  right,  no  doubt, 
in  saying  that  "slang  "is  an  "attempt"  "to  escape 
from  bald  literalism,  and  express  itself  inimitably" 
made  by  common  humanity;  but,  is  it  a  successful 
attempt  always,  and  is  common  humanity  to  be  the 
measure  of  "the  Answerer?"  If  we  are  to  see  our- 
selves glorified  in  him,  he  must  be  above  our  faults, 
succeed  easily  where  we  fail.  Barbaric  importations,* 
words  ruthlessly  mutilated,  a  disregard  for  the  asso- 
ciative atmosphere  of  words,  are  complaints  easily 
lodged  against  our  poet.  We  do  wish  he  had  not 
given  the  adversary  so  much  occasion  to  blaspheme. 
We  love  the  man,  we  reverence  his  purpose.  One 
who  prefers  me,  the  reader,  to  his  own  poem,  I  will 
endure  much  from — things  at  the  hand  of  another 
wholly  beyond  a  moment's  sufferance.  Why  "  meat 
of  a  man?"  Would  not  "flesh"  do?  Why  "Ma 
femme"  for  "bride"  or  "wife?"  Why  "rapport" 
for  "touch"  or  "sympathy?  "f  Why  some  of  the 

*  If  Whitman  hoped  these  foreign  words  used  occasionally 
would  serve  to  express  the  composite  nature  of  the  American 
people,  he  failed  signally.  Could  we  assimilate  as  ill  our  immi- 
grants as  Whitman's  English  does  these  unhappy  foreign  words, 
our  people  would  indeed  become  a  crazy  quilt! 

tin  his  prose,  terrific  expressions  abound:   " toploftical," 


"SO    LONG."  93 

words  that  have  appeared,  in  spite  of  all  efforts  to  ex- 
clude such  disturbers  of  the  peace,  in  the  quotations 
made  in  this  paper  ?  We  can  only,  as  lovers  of  Whit- 
man, regret  them.  We  shall  learn  not  to  notice 
them.  Why  a  plural  verb  with  a  singular  subject,  or 
the  reverse?  Why  "ye"  with  a  singular  noun  in  an 
apostrophe  ?  Such  trifles  sour  the  temper  of  the  new 
reader,  and  make  proselyting  no  easy  affair.  And 
who,  ha*ving  felt  that  Whitman  has  done  him  good, 
does  not  wish  to  do  a  little  private  unostentatious 
proselyting  ? 

Is  it  necessary  to  point  out  in  conclusion  what  are 
Whitman's  successes  artistically?  Perhaps  a  list  of 
poems  to  read  might  well  be  constructed,  though  we 
now  have  from  Mr.  Arthur  Stedman  a  selection  which 
can  be  obtained  in  America.*  Englishmen  have  been 
more  fortunate.f  Not  that  I  could  spare  any  thing 
from  Whitman's  volume,  but  there  is  a  good  deal  in 
it  that  is  rather  strong  meat  for  babes,  and  for  my 
part  I  should  like  to  put  Whitman's  book  into  the 
hands  of  babes. 

Crossing  Brooklyn  Ferry— A  SONG  OF  JOYS — 
Song  of  the  Universal — To  You — Out  of  the  Cradle 
Endlessly  Rocking — Tears — To  the  Man-of- Warbird 


" civilizee,"  cohered  out  of,"  " literatuses,"  "fetching  up  at," 
"  technists,"  "  admirant  toward,"  "  arrive,"  (=  background),  etc. 

*  Also  "  Gems  from  Whitman,"  by  Elizabeth  Porter. 

Prof.  Oscar  L.  Triggs,  of  Chicago  University,  is  now  engaged 
upon  a  long  needed  "  Primer  to  Whitman." 

t  Selections  of  Walt  Whitman's  poems,  edited  with  introduc- 
tion by  Wm.  M.  Rossetti.  Chatto  &  Windus,  London,  1886. 

"  Whitman"  (selections),  edited  by  Ernest  Rhys,  in  Canter- 
bury Poets.  Walter  Scott,  London. 


94  WALT   WHITMAN. 

—On  the  Beach  at  Night— The  World  Below  the 
Brine — On  the  Beach  at  Night  Alone — Gods — Beat ! 
Beat!  Drums!— The  Artillery  Man's  Vision — WHEN 
LILACS  LAST  IN  THE  DOCKYARD  BLOOMED — This  Com- 
post— Warble  for  Lilac-time — Sparkles  from  the  Wheel 
— The  Ox-tamer — PASSAGE  TO  INDIA — PRAYER  OF  CO- 
LUMBUS— A  Noiseless  Patient  Spider — Thou  Orb  Aloft 
Full- dazzling — THE  MYSTIC  TRUMPETER — To  a  Loco- 
motive in  Winter — A  Riddle  Song — Old  War  Dreams 
— Ashes  of  Soldiers — CAMPS  OF  GREEN — Halcyon  Days 
— WITH  HUSKY,  HAUGHTY  LIPS,  0  SEA. 

This  list,  by  no  means  of  course  complete,  is  made 
with  reference  to  the  reader.  Nothing  in  these,  we 
fancy,  can  possibly  give  him  any  reasonable  offense. 
If  he  has  come  to  enjoy  all  of  these,  let  him  trust 
himself  to  the  sea.  He  may  swallow  a  little  brine, 
but  he  will  not  drown. 

It  is  altogether  of  no  use  to  praise.  Praise  seems 
impertinent  to  him  who  has  enjoyed,  and  foolish  to 
the  prejudiced  or  unfortunate  person  who  can  not 
sympathize.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  minor  difficulties 
will  settle  themselves  in  time  for  the  student.  "rWith 
care  for  a  man  or  book  such  would  be  surmounted, 
and  without  it,  what  avails  the  faultlessness  of 
either?"  No  more  appropriate  words  here  than 
these  of  Robert  Browning  concerning  his  Sordello. 
The  greatest  difficulties  are  for  the  most  part  in  the 
reader.  Walt  Whitman  never  claimed  to  be  more 
than  a  pioneer.  He  tells  us  that  in  his  work  "the 
words  "  are  nothing,  the  drift  "  every  thing."  (p.  17.) 
Then,  too,  all  his  "  chants "  may  not  be  for  you. 
"Each  for  its  kind"  (p.  23)  says  he;  mine  for  me, 
therefore,  and  yours  for  you.  No  doubt  he  is  quite 


95 

ready  to  "  offer  his  style  to  any  one  "  (p.  380)  and  be 
surpassed  by  the  humblest  reader.  (Of.  p.  74.)  Un- 
doubtedly some  of  us  who  have  been  brought  up  in 
hot-houses  will  feel  uncomfortable  in  his  open  air, 
but,  after  the  first  horror  is  over,  the  sensation  of 
limitless  freedom  will  probably  seem  pleasant  if  any- 
thing. 

As  to  morals — and  decency — of  course  no  one  can 
answer  such  objections.  I  for  one  should  allow  them 
to  remain  insuperable.  If  your  morals  and  your 
modesty  should  be  in  imminent  danger  because  for- 
sooth Whitman,  like  your  physician,  knows  you  have 
a  body,  and,  like  your  conscience,  is  sure  you  have 
sinned  enough  not  to  cast  stones  at  the  most  degraded 
brother  or  sister,  is  it  wTith  him,  forsooth,  you  are  go- 
ing to  be  angry  when  he  lets  "  nature  speak  with 
original  energy?"  (p.  27)  when  he  makes  his  song 
and  you  meet  "  the  facts  face  to  face?"  (p.  271.) 
Do  you  suppose  Whitman  never  had  any  qualms 
about  his  "Adamic"  songs?  (Cf.  Pr.,  p.  191.)  If 
against  the  wishes  of  dear  friends  he  would  not  con- 
sent to  their  suppression  he  must  have  thought  he 
had  a  good  reason.  He  explains  himself  fully  on  this 
point  in  "  Ventures  on  an  old  Theme."  (Pr.,  p.  322.) 
If  he  eliminated  the  "  stock  poetic  expressions "  so 
dear  to  you,  it  will  perhaps  comfort  you  to  know  it 
cost  him  a  great  deal  of  trouble  to  do  this.  (Pr.,  pp. 
20,  518.)  If,  wishing  "  the  strength  of  health,"  not 
of  "  delirium  "  (Pr.,  p.  157),  he  sometimes  gives  you 
what  he  terms  the  "  drench  of  passions  "  "  life  coarse 
and  rank  "  (p.  94),  it  is  better  than  if  he  had  indulged 
you  in  spiced  innuendos  and  prurient  proprieties.  If 
he  annoys  you  by  his  perpetual  cheer,  if  in  your  fits 


yb  WALT   WHITMAN. 

of  cultured  listlessness  or  philosophic  despondency 
he  positively  irritates  you  by  giving  "  himself  the 
benefit  of  the  doubt,"  and  insisting  that  he  is  happy 
unless  he  is  very  sure  indeed  of  the  contrary  (Pr.,  p. 
92),  it  may  perhaps  be  a  pleasant  thought  to  you  that 
he  at  times  felt  "  these  modern  tendencies  to  turn 
every  thing  to  pathos,  ennui,  morbidity,  dissatisfac- 
tion, death."  (Pr.,  p.  109.)  Thirty  years  of  ill  health 
could  not  break  his  spirit.  He  insisted  that  "  in  the 
fact  of  life  itself"  we  should  "  discover  and  achieve 
happiness."  (Pr.,  p.  249.) 

Do  you  say,  O  all  this  optimism  would  be  well  in 
Millennial  days,  not  now?  Well,  he  will  tell  you  it  is 
good  to  live  in  the  future.  It  is  magnificent  to  have 
occasion  for  the  "afflatus"  to  fall  on  you,  it  is  glorious 
to  hear  the  "holy  ghost"  speak  within,  to  have  the 
"prophetic  vision."  (Pr.,  p.  227.) 

If  you  are  angered  by  his  self-sufficiency,  and 
fancy  he  means  really  to  repel  you,  it  will  be  well  to 
remember  that "  though  the  live-oak  glistens  "  solitary, 
Whitman  knows  very  well  that  he  at  all  events  "could 
not  without  a  friend,  a  lover  near."  (p.  106.)  If 
you  wish  he  had  been  a  greater  scholar,  like  yourself 
very  learned,  incapable  of  technical  blunders  even 
when  off  his  guard,  you  will  be  apt  to  forgive  him 
when  you  consider  how  on  the  occasion  of  his  remark 
that  Browning  "must  be  deeply  studied  out"  and 
"quite  certainly  repays  the  trouble,"  he  frankly  ad- 
mitted that  he  for  his  part  was  "  too  old  and  indolent," 
that  he  could  not  "study"  and  "in  fact  never"  had 
"studied."  (Pr.,  p.  483.) 

After  all  Whitman  is  what  he  is.  If  you  want 
him  to  take  you  by  the  hand  he  will  do  it  in  his  own 

\ 


97 

hearty,  rough  way.  He  will  not  shake  your  arm  out 
of  joint,  but  no  one  can  promise  that  your  monocle 
will  not  be  dislodged  from  its  supercilious  place; — 
and  who  would  venture  his  reputation  as  a  prophet 
by  assuring  you  that  your  immaculate  shirt  bosom 
will  suffer  no  rumples  if  he  should  happen  to  put  his 
big  brawny  arms  about  you? 

In  conclusion,  you  may  ask  me,  why  can  I  not 
get  the  same  thing  Whitman  gives  from  another — say, 
Emerson  or  Browning?  Well,  perhaps  you  can.  The 
fact  however  is  that  Emerson's  words  sound  imper- 
sonal, abstract  and  cold — vague,  unreal — while  there 
is  no  doubt  you  shall  have  to  understand  Whitman. 
He  drives  his  ideas  like  wedges  of  live  lightning  into 
your  soul.  No  shields  or  helmets  or  customary  con- 
vention will  protect  it.  You  may  walk  with  Brown- 
ing (I  say  you  may)  and  take  an  absurd  delight  in  his 
difficulties  as  such,  you  may  fancy  all  he  says  has 
reference  only  to  this  man  or  that  woman — you  may 
apply  the  sermon  to  your  neighbor  in  the  pew  and 
remain  Pharisaically  content — you  may  look  upon 
Browning's  poetry  only  as  an  arsenal  for  controversial 
weapons,  and  use  Elvire's  husband's  logic  to  justify 
your  marital  irregularities,  or  Bishop  Blougram's  argu- 
ments to  fortify  your  soul  in  lucrative  deceit — (I  have 
known  a  bishop  to  quote  his  sophistries  copiously,  elabo- 
rately, in  a  defense  of  his  own  theological  position !) — but 
one  thing  is  very  sure,  Whitman's  Message  is  to  you.  It 
is  positively  you  he  means.  There  is  no  doubt  about 
this.  When  he  lashes,  it  is  you  are  hurt.  When  he 
mocks,  it  is  you  who  feel  rebuked.  When  he  exults, 
it  is  you  who  are  uplifted  from  the  slough  of  your 
despond.  When  you  try  to  pose  as  virtuous,  it  is  you 


98  WALT   WHITMAN. 

he  will  denounce.  If  you  are  dealing  in  "  doubts, 
swervings,"  and  subtle  "doublings  upon"  yourself 
"typical  of  our  age"  (Pr.,  p.  403),  it  is  out  of  you  he 
will  "shame  silliness"  (p.  38)  and  make  you  very  sure 
of  yourself.  If  you  are  thinking  of  what  a  poor 
chance  in  life  you  have,  he  will  tell  you  it  is  just  what 
you  make  of  it,  and  that  you  can  be  a  hero,  "  a  God  " 
if  you  please.  Now  all  this  is  said  to  you — unmistak- 
ably to  you — and  there  is  no  possible  evasion!  How 
then  can  you  afford  to  wrap  yourself  in  a  cloak  of  re- 
fined prejudices? 

Stranger,  if  you  passing  meet  rne  and  desire  to  speak  to  me,  why 

should  you  not  speak  to  me  ? 
And  why  should  I  not  speak  to  you  ?    (p.  18.) 


APPENDIX  1. 

BYRON  AS  CHANTER  OF  PERSONALITY. 
(See  note  J,  page  77.) 

As  Chanter  of  personality  Whitman  had  a  predecessor  in 
Lord  Byron,  the  spell  of  whose  poetry  on  his  contemporaries  was 
due  in  large  measure  to  the  novel  importance  accorded  the  "  in- 
dividual will."  In  the  early  romances  the  integrity  of  the  indi- 
vidual was  made  to  seem  of  more  importance  than  moral  laws. 
In  Childe  Harold's  Pilgrimage  we  were  given  a  passionate  diary, 
and  in  Don  Juan  a  sarcastic  one,  of  that  defiant  individuality.  In 
Manfred  he  appears  as  hero.  The  world  can  not  yield  him  ob- 
livion when  too  late  he  has  found  out  that 

"  The  tree  of  knowledge  is  not  that  of  life." 

Nor  can  the  beauty  of  it,  for  he  would  have  to  surrender  him- 
self to  it — a  thing  he  will  not  do.  Every  thing  speaks  to  him  of 
himself.  Summoning  to  his  aid  magical  powers,  he  brings  before 
himself  the  shadow  of  Astarte,  his  beloved,  for  the  destruction 
of  whose  happiness,  it  is,  his  soul  is  suffering  perpetual  torture. 
He  has  long  ceased  to  justify  "his"  deeds  uunto"  himself — 
"  the  last  infirmity  of  evil."  All  left  to  him  is  self-mastery, 
making: 

"  His  torture  tributary  to  his  will.    .     .    ." 

"No  other  spirit    .     .    .    hath 
A  soul  like  his — or  power  upon  his  soul." 

For  his  power  over  spirits 

"  Was  purchased  by  no  compact,    .    .    . 
But  by  superior  science." 

He  did  not  bow  to  Arimanes,  prince  of  devils : 

"  Bid  him  bow  down  to  that  which  is  above  him 
The  overruling  Infinite    .     .    . 
And  we  will  kneel  together." 

He  utterly  rejects  the  comforts  of  Christianity,  as  hitherto 
understood,  which  are  offered  by  the  Abbot : 

(99) 


100  APPENDIX. 

"  Whate'er 

I  may  have  been,  or  am,  doth  rest  between 
Heaven  and  myself.    I  shall  not  choose  a  mortal 
To  be  my  mediator." 

"  There  is  no  power    .    .    . 
Can  exorcise    .    .    . 

From  out  the  unbounded  spirit,  the  quick  sense 
Of  its  own  sins,  wrongs,  sufferance,  and  revenge 
Upon  itself ;  there  is  no  future  pang 
Can  deal  that  justice  on  the  self-condemned 
He  deals  on  his  own  soul." 

As  he  has  refused  the  help  of  heaven,  so  does  he  defy  the 
powers  of  hell : 

"Away.    I'll  die  as  I  have  lived—  alone.    .    .    ." 
"  I  do  defy  ye, — though  I  feel  my  soul 

Is  ebbing  from  me,  yet  I  do  defy  ye ;    ... 
What  ye  take 

Shall  be  ta'en  limb  by  limb." 

"  I  stand 

Upon  my  strength — I  do  defy — deny — 
Spurn  back,  and  scorn  ye !" 

"  Back  to  thy  hell ! 

Thou  hast  no  power  upon  me,  that  I  feel ; 
Thou  never  shall  possess  me,  that  I  know ; 
What  I  have  done  is  done." 

"  Thou  did'st  not  tempt  me,  and  thou  couldst  not  tempt  me ; 
I  have  not  been  thy  dupe,  nor  am  thy  prey — 

But  was  my  own  destroyer,  and  will  be 
My  own  hereafter. — Back,  ye  baffled  fiends ! 
The  hand  of  Death  is  on  me — but  not  yours!" 

A  strong  protest  all  through,  surely,  against  the  immoral  no- 
tion (however  religious  it  may  be)  that  we  are  but  a  battle-field 
for  angels  and  devils !  How  wretched  is  he  whose  individuality 
and  its  exceeding  pride  sunders  him  from  his  fellows  is  also  shown 
in  Manfred.  What  draws  us  in  Manfred  is  not  however  the  fact 
of  his  misery,  but  his  tremendous  sense  of  responsibility,  his  in- 
domitable courage,  his  determination  for  good  or  ill  to  be  himself, 
and  to  consider  no  dastardly  escape — putting  his  guilt  on  an  inno- 


APPENDIX.  101 

cent  Savior — as  worthy  of  a  man ;  yet  at  the  same  time  equally 
prepared  to  extirpate  the  cowardice  that  would  throw  the  burden 
on  evil  spirits.  For  this  powerful  protest  against  whatever  would 
destroy  the  dignity  of  the  soul,  we  must  honor  Byron,  and  realize 
fully  the  advance  that  has  been  made  in  this  direction  when  we 
compare  the  last  scene  of  Manfred  with  the  pitiful  moral  break- 
down of  Faustus  in  the  great  Marlowe's  drama,  which  does  duty 
for  catastrophe,  and  has  been  so  extravagantly  praised,  not,  alas, 
always  for  its  poetry,  but  for  the  indirect  tribute  it  is  supposed  to 
pay  to  a  moribund  theology.  Does  poor  Kit  turn  in  his  grave, 
when  that  scene  is  thus  praised  ? 


APPEKDIX  2. 

A  HOSTILE  CRITIQUE  ON  WHITMAN. 
(See  note  *,  page  10.) 

The  Apostle  of  Chaotism.  The  University  of  the  South 
Magazine,  predecessor  of  the  Sewanee  Review,  May,  1890 : 

"  We  have  before  us  a  book,  and  one,  whatever  may  be  said 
of  it,  unique  in  character.  It  purports  to  contain  poetry.  Capi- 
tals at  the  beginning  of  jaggedVlines  inform  the  eye  of  that  de- 
liberate intention.  The  whole  is  launched  defiantly  into  the 
world.  From  hearsay  we  gather  that  Wordsworth's  prophecy  has 
been  at  length  fulfilled.  Surely,  he  who  chanted  immortality  of 
idiot  boys  and  Peter  Bells  would  hail  this  robust  disciple  of  his 
theory  who  uses  the  language  of  semi-cultivated  men  to  express 
life  as  fully  as  he  perceives  it,  unflinchingly,  forcibly,  without  re- 
gard to  aesthetic  or  ethical  conventions,  a  prophet  superior  to  all 
time-honored  artifice.  The  Master  put  great  faith  in  his  reader's 
longevity,  the  more  advanced  Disciple,  in  his  unliability  to 
nausea.  .  .  .  Was  the  book  written  solely  to  obtain  notoriety 
for  one  who  had  vainly  striven  after  legitimate  fame  ?  To  be 
novel  at  any  price  was  his  purpose,  think  you?  To  disprove 
Solomon's  wisdom  by  letting  the  sun  shine  on  something  new? 
All  had  been  tried  that  seemed  not  in  absolute  violation  of  beauty 
and  decency.  There  remained  for  an  ambitious  conqueror  only 
what  had  been  hitherto  contemned.  Better  be  king  of  gutter-filth 
and  "  foetor,"  to  plant  one's  foot  on  the  world's  dung-hill,  than  to 
cower,  one  of  many,  be  they  never  so  noble,  or  to  be  jostled  on  the 


102  APPENDIX. 

thronged  steps  of  shining  temples  where  none  seem  great  but  the 
superhuman." 

"  I  am  willing  to  wait  to  be  understood  by  the  growth  of  the 
taste  of  myself."  So  a  dim  hope  is  really  extended  to  us,  lest  we 
might  fancy  ignorance  and  folly  were  trying  to  pass  for  inspira- 
tion, thanks  to  a  veil  of  chaotic  incomprehensibility,  and  that  for 
aught  we  knew  a  maniac  might  be  the  veiled  prophet! 

Any  definition  of  verse  stricter  than  one  which  might  admit 
the  best  utterances  of  Whitman,  would  exclude  those  of  David, 
Solomon,  Ezekiel,  Job,  and  St.  John  the  Divine. 

"  Faces  so  pale  with  wondrous  eyes,  very  dear,  gather  closer  yet 
Draw  close,  but  speak  not. 
Phantoms  of  countless  lost, 
Invisible  to  the  rest,  henceforth  my  companions, 
Follow  me  ever — desert  me  not  while  I  live. 
Sweet  are  the  blooming  checks  of  the  living— sweet  are  the 

musical  voices  sounding, 
But  sweet,  ah,  sweet  are  the  dead  with  their  silent  eyes !  " 

Will  this  be  prose,  and  Matthew  Arnold's  "  Philomela  "  verse, 
and  consequently  poetry?  Read  the  closing  strophe  of  the 
"  Passage  to  India."  Do  you  pronounce  it  utterly  prose  ?  Has  it 
not  more  fire  than  much  American  "  poetry  ?  " 

Verse  of  English  poets  has  hitherto  been  rhythmic  within 
metric  limits  somewrhat  arbitrarily  adopted,  but  once  adopted,  in- 
violable. Here  we  have  language  intended  to  be  rhythmic  with- 
out such  fixed  metric  limits.  Shall  then  the  best  utterances  of 
Whitman  be  confined  forever  deep  in  a  Dantesque  hell  of  prose, 
without  hope  of  purgatory  or  heaven  ?  Had  we  only  these  best 
utterances,  a  case  might  be  made.  Doubtless,  Whitman  consci- 
entiously thought  that,  except  in  those  rare  cases  where  he 
rhymed  intentionally,  he  had  succeeded  in  casting  all  forms  to  the 
wind.  To  obey  any  restrictions,  whether  of  fair  precedent  or 
reason,  would  have  been  quite  inconsistent  in  the  "Adamic  "  citi- 
zen and  "  chanter  "  of  these  states ;  hence  he  resolved  to  take  his 
natural  limitations  for  his  only  law.  Nevertheless,  to  say  that  he 
"  escaped  form  "  were  absurd.  Whenever  he  is  most  harmonious, 
he  can  be  scanned,  and  we  can  not  doubt  but  that  in  his  heart  he 
preferred  those  passages.  Furthermore,  he  is  fast  bound  in  the 


APPENDIX.  103 

most  illiberal  of  mannerisms.  Having  rejected  meters,  he 
adopted  as  his  perpetual  style  ejaculatory  abruptness,  impas- 
sioned contempt  for  grammar  and  logic.  Anacolouthon  trans- 
figured is  his  favorite  mold  for  "  ecstatic  chants."  Miltonic  latin- 
isms  sorely  out  of  atmosphere ;  barbarisms  that  career  through 
his  pages  like  Huns  putting  all  harmony  to  fire  and  sword ;  vul- 
garities that  rasp  and  rip;  inconceivable  pilings  of  detached 
words,  formless  pyramids  without  visible  apex  or  foundation, 
very  towers  of  Babel  with  plentiful  confusion  of  tongues— English 
Spanish,  French,  and  Slang — to  the  utter  consternation  of  the 
reader,  and  the  temporary  prostration  of  his  aesthetic  and  moral 
judgment.  Let  us  see  what  is  possible  to  this  contemner  of 
style.  Why,  a  frenetic  upward  flight  of  nine  hundred  and  fifteen 
words — no  rest,  no  real  connection — a  thunder-cloud  of  crows  to 
obscure  the  sun,  and  deafen  the  earth  with  hoarse  cries.  Here  is 
the  peccant  period,  yet  innocent  compared  with  some  of  its  Kith 
and  Kin.  (Song  of  Myself,  Strophe,  33.) 

In  "  Salut  au  Monde  "  we  are  regaled  with  geography  ecstatics 
insane,  and  foaming  at  the  mouth : — nations,  cities,  rivers,  mount- 
ains, all  in  a  stupendous  whirl  of  incoherence,  introduced  by  8 
Walt  Whitman's,  18  I  hears,  16  I  sees,  2  I  beJwlds  (on  account  of  the 
word's  superior  rarity  patronizing  9  some  clauses),  19  others,  2 
wait  ats,  with  a  redoubtable  array  of  cities,  50  /  sees,  5  /  am  cover- 
ings, with  24  cities,  1  I  belong  in  with  7, 1 1  descend  with  a  full  stop. 
Then  with  renewed  ardor,  having  touched  ground,  12  1  sees,  1 
1  look  on,  I  I  see  at,  1  /  look  on,  8  I  sees,  27  exclamatory  yous,  2  all 
yous,  2  and  yous,  5  each  ofus's  18  yous,  2  I  do's,  etc.,  etc.  This  is 
climax  without  doubt,  but  with  respect  to  infinite  distances, 
where  parallel  lines  meet  and  other  strange  things  will  occur  from 
time  to  time;  ay,  a  climax,  to  be  sure,  leviathen-like  and 
choice!  . 

We  begin  to  understand  his  poetic  rapacity  and  would  be  led 
to  fancy  the  digestive  powers  of  his  "  omnivorous  "  lines  excellent, 
but  for  "  belched  words."  And  yet  he  says :  "  I  have  offered  my 
style  to  every  one !"  For  him  the  muses  are  undaunted  Bacchantes, 
hands  gored  with  the  blood  of  Orpheus,  feet  frantic  around  the 
huge  anacolouthon  which  serves  for  throne  to  Jove,  shouting  in- 
sanely and  tossing  out  their  hydrophobic  carols. 

As  has  been  implied,  his  Rhapsodies  are  for  the  most  part 
didactic.  Very  much  precious  time  is  spent  in  assuring  us  with 
exquisite  irrelevancy  that  he  sings.  Could  frequent  reiteration 


104  APPENDIX. 

change  falsehood  into  truth,  some  would  doubtless  become 
convinced  of  that  would-be  fact.  It  is  no  exaggeration  to  state 
that  his  usual  song  consists  in  saying  over  and  over  again  that,  he 
is  about  to  sing,  and  cataloguing  the  subjects  of  future  "  re- 
citatives," "ecstatic  songs,"  " chants,"  and  "  carols."  Evidently 
this  ends  in  becoming  more  formal  even  than  the  stilted  invoca- 
tions which  Byron  satirized  in  "  Hail,  muse,  etc.,  we  left  Don 
Juan." 

Sympathy  and  manliness  (although  the  former  is  often  un- 
bearably blasphemous  and  the  latter  brutal,  or  bestial),  are  his  most 
captivating  qualities." 

Alas !  Who,  or  rather  what,  is  his  God  ?  ...  It  is  univer- 
sally inclusive — a  sort  of  aqua  regia  that  dissolves  all  hetero- 
geneous substance  into  homogeneous  (protoplasmic  ?)  liquid,  which 
may  be  taken  like  a  patent  medicine  for  all  soul  and  skin  diseases 
in  homoeopathic  doses.  "Why  should  I  pray?  Why  should  I 
venerate  and  be  ceremonious  ?  .  .  .  I  find  no  sweeter  fat  than 
sticks  to  my  own  bones."  In  my  case,  I  should  prefer  that 
interesting  comparison  to  be  post-mortem.  "And  I  say  to  man- 
kind, be  not  curious  about  God."  "  I  see  something  of  God  each 
hour  of  the  twenty-four."  "  I  find  letters  from  God  dropped  in 
the  street,"  thanks  to  a  trans-stellar  postal  service,  "and  every 
one  signed  by  God's  name."  We  believe  we  have  reached  a 
materialistic  pantheism  with  a  ubiquitous  quasi-gazeous  "  deus  in 
machina."  In  spite  of  lack  of  "  curiosity,"  like  Mephistopheles 
he  likes  to  keep  on  good  terms  "  with  the  Old  Man"  (we  quote 
from  Goethe),  and  so  the  average  man  represented  by  Walt 
Whitman  pays  occasionally  a  personal  visit  to  his  Collective  or 
Average  God.  "  My  rendezvous  is  appointed,  it  is  certain !  " 

I  this  (referring  to  the  Square  Deific)  the  sublimity  of  drunk- 
enness? Nay,  hear  this  Vesuvian  burst  of  adoration:  "Santa 
Spirita,"  etc.,  etc. 

Let  us  follow  him  step  by  step,  from  his  Nihilistic  Theology 
and  Chaotistic  Ethics,  to  his  more  positive  creed:  "  Knowing  the 
perfect  fitness  of  things,  while  they  discuss  I  am  silent  and  go 
and  bathe  and  admire  myself."  "  To  look  on  my  rose-colored 
flesh!  ...  To  be  this  incredible  God  I  am !"  Lo,  Polyphemus, 
his  only  eye  put  out  by  Lust,  playing  at  Narcissus  by  the  stream 
side  1  "If  I  worship  one  thing  more  than  another  it  shall  be  the 


APPENDIX.  105 

spread  of  my  body  or  any  part  of  it,  etc.,  etc.;"  for,  then,  in  spite 
of  the  Doctrine  of  Indifference,  dinned  in  our  ears  over  and  over 
again,  he  specializes  from  his  belligerent  Pan-Fetichism  with  an 
incredible  enthusiasm ;  and,  after  substituting  "  meat "  for  "  flesh," 
"procreation"  for  "creation,"  "breeding"  for  "love"  in  the 
technical  terminology,  and  furthermore,  supplementing  it  with  a 
munificent  new  vocabulary  of  hilarious  diabolism,  he  attempts  to 
establish  in  utterly  unquotable  ravings  his  more  perfectly  evolved 
system  of  Neo-phallicism. 

Yea,  thou  prophet,  thou  Apostle  of  Chaotism,  we  greet  thee ! 
Hail,  thou  that  art — nay,  let  us  grow  calm — only  a  man,  rude,  and 
glorying  in  his  rudeness ;  crude,  and  magnifying  crudeness ;  dar- 
ing, brutal,  sympathic,  bestial,  atheistic,  nihilistic,  socialistic, 
American,  cosmopolitan,  materialistic,  mystic,  dreamer,  ranter — 
nay,  let  us  not  call  him  fool,  let  us  not  call  him  maniac, — only  the 
benign  Apostle  of  Chaotism!  He  who  finds  "humanity"  too 
narrow  a  term  and  would  substitute  "  animality,"  which  is  less 
exclusive ! 

This  rhapsodist,  this  poet  (if  we  may  call  a  sewer-rat  astray 
in  the  secret  parts  of  Parnassus  by  such  names),  although  he  is 
ever  raving  of  this  land,  God  be  praised,  he  is  not  representative 
of  these  States,  nor  of  Canada  (spelt  with  a  K),  nor  of  the  Potta- 
wattami  Indians,  primitive  though  they  be.  He  does  not  stand 
for  America,  nor  for  this  age,  nor  for  mankind  in  any  historic 
age.  Catullus,  Boccaccio,  Eabelais,  were  prudes-among-Puritans  to 
him.  He  is  a  monstrosity  that  can  be  classed  in  no  known  geo- 
logical age,  nor  Pliocene,  nor  Miocene ;  but  in  one  only,  of  which 
he  is  the  sole  relic,  and  which  by  analogy  to  these  we  might  term 
conveniently  the  Obscene. 


ERRATA. 

Page  30,  line  10,  for  "  happy  "  read  "  unhappy." 
Page  37,  line  8,  for  "purient"  read  "prurient." 
Page  49,  line  5,  for  "  literary  "  read  "  literally." 
Page  63,  line  30,  for  "p.  814"  read  "p.  80." 
Page  84,  last  line,  for  "  pp.  255-259  "  read  "  pp.  32-34." 
Page  104,  line  30,  for  "  I  this  "  read  "Is  this." 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

RENEWALS  ONLY— TEL.  NO.  642-3405 

This  book  is  due-on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


HAH  9  '69  -11  AW 

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MflR  19  mo 

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JAH  09  1989 

AUTO  DISC    MAR  1  5   19* 

9 

LD  21A-40m-2,'69 
( J6057slO) 476 — A-32 


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